Region

GAZA STRIP, occupied Palestine — Palestinians in war-torn Gaza on Thursday eagerly awaited aid trucks promised in a deal struck by US President Joe Biden with Egypt and Israel, as the army struck more Hamas targets.

The Israeli aggression against Gaza has set off fury across the Middle East against Israel and its Western allies. It has claimed at least 3,785 lives in the Gaza Strip, its health ministry said on Thursday, with entire city blocks levelled, water, food and power cut off, and more than 1 million displaced.United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged "rapid, unimpeded humanitarian access" to the besieged Gaza Strip on Thursday.

"We need food, water, medicine and fuel now. We need it at scale and we need it to be sustained, it is not one small operation that is required," Guterres said in Cairo, as calls mounted for aid to reach the territory's 2.4 million people.

"In plain terms, that means humanitarians need to be able to get aid in and they need to be able to distribute it safely."

“The pace of death, of suffering, of destruction... cannot be exaggerated,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said about the situation in the crowded territory of 2.4 million people.

There are fears of worse to come if Israel launches an anticipated ground invasion.

Biden, on a flying visit to meet prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war Cabinet on Wednesday, reiterated strong US support for its long-time ally but also stressed the need to address the plight of Palestinian civilians.

He said he had agreed a deal for an initial 20 trucks carrying relief goods to pass through the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza, with the first deliveries expected Friday at the earliest.

“We want to get as many of the trucks out as possible,” Biden told reporters on Air Force One as he flew home.

Desperate to escape 

More than 100 trucks carrying aid goods have been queued for days on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, the only entry or exit point to Gaza not controlled by Israel.

Cairo has so far kept it closed, pointing to repeated Israeli strikes near the checkpoint and voicing fears that Israel may be hoping to permanently drive Palestinians out and into Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

On the Gaza side, scores of people were again waiting, desperate to flee, but careful to keep about 100 metres  away in case of new Israeli bombardment.

“We’re ready with our bags,” said one man who only gave his name as Mohammed, 40, and who said he works for a European institution.

He said he had been waiting “for three days with my family, in a house 10 minutes away from the crossing” but had received no information so far.

Majed, 43, who said he works with a German organisation, told AFP: “I came on my own this morning and, in case the crossing opens, I’d get my wife and children, they’re ready.”

Biden, who was due to address the nation on Thursday about the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts, announced the aid truck deal after what he called “blunt” talks in Israel and a phone call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.

Israel consented to the deal while pressing on with its military campaign.

Biden, the first US president to visit Israel during war time, strongly backed Israel but warned it not to overreact.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday became the latest foreign leader to make a solidarity visit to Israel, meeting Netanyahu and President Isaac Hertzog.

The Arab world has been united in anger and condemnation of Israel since a deadly strike hit a Gaza hospital compound on Tuesday.

The strike left scores of bodies and charred cars at the Ahli Arab hospital compound in northern Gaza, AFP images showed.

DUBAI — A Gaza hospital strike that killed at least 200 people has unleashed a torrent of condemnation across the Arab world, with even allies blaming Israel for the attack, despite its denials.

The denunciations coincided with angry rallies in Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, Iran and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, following calls for a "day of rage" across the region.

Jordan said Israel "bears responsibility for this grave incident" while Qatar, which has close ties to Hamas, slammed the "brutal massacre".

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, also blaming Israel, called it "a war crime, a crime against humanity, and organised state terrorism".

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which both established ties with Israel in the Abraham Accords of 2020, condemned the "Israeli" attack which came as Israel lays siege to Gaza.

"The United Arab Emirates strongly condemns the Israeli attack... resulting in the death and injury of hundreds of people," the UAE's official WAM news agency said early on Wednesday.

Bahrain's foreign ministry "expressed the Kingdom of Bahrain's condemnation and strong denunciation of the Israeli bombing", the Bahrain News Agency said.

Morocco, another country that recognised Israel in 2020, also blamed it for the strike, as did Egypt, which became the first Arab country to normalise relations in 1979.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi condemned in the strongest terms "the Israeli bombing" of the Ahli Arab hospital, which led to "the deaths of hundreds of innocent victims" among the Palestinian citizens in Gaza.

He called the “deliberate bombing” a “clear violation of international law”.

‘War crime’ 

During a press conference in Beirut on Wednesday, Palestinian resistance group Hamas called for attacks against Israeli forces in the West Bank and other territories in response to the hospital strike.

“We call on our people in the West Bank and our people in Palestine...to rise up against the Zionist enemy and clash with its forces in all cities, villages and camps,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told reporters.

Hamdan called for region-wide protests on Friday and Saturday, demanding the “expulsion of the ambassadors of the Zionist entity in all Arab and Islamic capitals”.

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi said it was “glaring evidence of the serious violations by the Israeli occupation forces”.

Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit called on Tuesday for leaders to “stop this tragedy immediately”.

“What diabolical mind intentionally bombards a hospital and its defenceless inhabitants?” he wrote on X, previously Twitter.

The strike came during a wave of deadly Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hizbollah movement called for a “day of rage” against Israel following the attack as hundreds rallied at the US and French embassies overnight, where they scuffled with security forces.

In Tunisia, thousands gathered outside the French embassy demanding the expulsion of the French and US ambassadors in protest at their governments’ support for Israel.

Iraq, which also blamed Israeli authorities, demanded an “immediate and urgent resolution” from the UN Security Council to stop Israel’s Gaza onslaught, as hundreds protested in the capital Baghdad, brandishing Palestinian flags.

Algeria condemned the strike as a “barbaric act” carried out by “occupation forces”.

CAIRO — Egypt's president said on Wednesday he would not allow any mass influx of refugees from Gaza, saying it would set a precedent for "the displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan".

After talks with visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi blamed Israel's air strikes on the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt for the failure to get aid to the territory's 2.4 million people.

"The displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt means the same displacement will take place for Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan," Sisi warned.

"Subsequently, the Palestinian state that we are talking about and that the world is talking about will become impossible to implement, because the land is there, but the people are not. Therefore, I warn of the danger of this matter."

Sisi's meeting with the German chancellor came as Gaza faced a 12th straight day of ferocious Israeli bombardment.

About 3,000 people have been killed in Gaza, which is nearly out of electricity, food, water and fuel.

Pressure has mounted for aid to be allowed in through Egypt's Rafah crossing with Gaza, the only access to the besieged territory not controlled by Israel.

Sisi said Egypt "did not close" the crossing, but that "developments on the ground and the repeated bombings by Israel of the Palestinian side of the crossing have prevented its operation".

Hundreds of lorries carrying aid have been waiting for six days on the Egyptian side of the crossing, which Israeli aircraft has bombed four times.

Scholz told reporters Berlin and Cairo "are working together to get humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip as quickly as possible".

The two men also warned against the threat of regional spillover, with the Egyptian president calling for "immediate international intervention" to put a stop to "dangerous military escalation that may get out of control".

Scholz reiterated that Germany sought to avoid a "conflagration in the Middle East" and warned Hizbollah and Iran "once again not to intervene in this conflict".

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas too has warned that the displacement of Gazans to Egypt would amount to a “second Nakba” — when more than 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their lands during the war that accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948.

Most of Gaza’s population are refugees from that exodus.

Egypt has repeatedly refused to accept what it calls the transfer of Israel’s responsibility as an occupying power, including to “provide for the safety of civilians” living under its occupation.

Dismissing comments by pundits about Sinai being a sparsely populated desert area, Sisi suggested Israel’s Negev Desert as an alternative refuge for Gazans.

“Palestinians could be moved there until Israel is finished with what it has declared is an operation to eliminate armed groups” from Gaza, the president said.

“And then it could return them if it wished,” he added.

GENEVA — The number of Sudanese families going hungry has near-doubled after six months of fighting between rival generals, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Thousands have been killed and millions displaced or forced to flee Sudan — while more than half of those remaining need humanitarian aid.

“The number of hungry families has almost doubled,” the UN’s health and children’s agencies said in a joint statement.

“700,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and 100,000 children require life-saving treatment for acute malnutrition with medical complications,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF said.

The agencies warned that further health system disruptions caused by the conflict would result in “unacceptably high” numbers of preventable deaths among children and vulnerable populations.

They cited a projection by Johns Hopkins University which indicated that “at least 10,000 children under five years of age may die by the end of 2023 due to the increase in food insecurity, and disruptions to essential services” since the conflict broke out on April 15.

The US university’s Lives Saved Tool modelling is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Sudanese army, led by Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, has been battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, after the two fell out in a power struggle.

More than 9,000 people have been killed in the conflict so far, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.

More than a million people have fled Sudan to seek refuge abroad.

A further 4.5 million are considered internally displaced persons, having fled their homes but stayed within the country.

That means there are now 7.1 million IDPs in Sudan — the largest number in the world, the UN agencies said.

“Health facilities are occupied, looted or destroyed. About 70 per cent of hospitals in conflict-affected states are not functional,” it said.

The WHO and UNICEF said they were deeply concerned about cholera, measles, malaria and dengue spreading.

“Health workers have not been paid in months. Supplies are depleted. Critical infrastructure is still under attack. The fighting needs to stop now,” said Mandeep O’Brien, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan.

GAZA STRIP, occupied Palestine — Hundreds of families flocked to Gaza's overwhelmed hospitals on Tuesday seeking refuge from the seemingly endless Israeli army shelling as it builds up for a ground offensive.

Gaza residents, who have been warned to get out of the north of the Palestinian territory, have packed courtyards and corridors in the hospitals that have been relatively unscathed from the Israeli assault that followed the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

Amira, 44, and her children have moved to the courtyard of the Nasser hospital in the southern district of Khan Yunis.

"Our bodies itch all over. It has been a week since we could take a shower," she told AFP as she prepared sandwiches for her children with some loaves she had been given.

"Death might be more merciful," she added.

About one million people from northern Gaza have moved to Khan Yunis and other southern districts to avoid the looming Israeli ground offensive.

More than 2,750 people have died in Israeli bombardments.

About 100,000 people are left in the northern district around Gaza City that Israel says is a Hamas stronghold and has warned will be the target of its assault.

Conditions across the tiny territory are worsening every day for the 2.4 million population, according to aid agencies.

UNICEF, the UN children's agency, has said that unless water and fuel are sent "immediately", Gaza inhabitants are in "imminent danger" of epidemics and death.

The only crossing to the rest of the world at Rafah is closed.

Egypt has refused to open Rafah even though trucks loaded with aid are waiting on the Egyptian side of the border.

Some shells have fallen on the Gaza side and Egypt, Israel and the United States have failed to agree a mechanism to allow the border gates to open to let aid in and some foreign nationals out.

Israel has also cut power and water supplies to Gaza as part of its action.

Israel has partially eased the water ban, but only a tiny fraction of the amount needed for hospitals and shops has passed through.

Gaza’s hospitals say they will struggle to keep operating and the human toll grows every hour.

Hundreds of children are already among the dead and there are 10,000 injured, many packed into the six remaining hospitals.

Shortages of medicines have added to the crisis caused by the lack of water and fuel to keep medical establishments running.