التصنيف: estaql

Two and a half weeks after sending tanks and ground troops into northern Gaza, Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of patients and displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza, said Israeli tanks were inside the medical compound on Wednesday and that soldiers had entered buildings, including the emergency and surgery departments.

The Israeli army claims that Hamas uses hospitals as cover for its fighters and has set up a command centre in and beneath al-Shifa, the largest medical facility in the besieged territory. Both Hamas and hospital staff deny the Israeli allegations.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military’s attention is also focused on parts of southern Gaza, said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Khan Younis. “In the last couple of hours, three residential houses in Khan Younis city have been bombarded,” he said late on Wednesday.

While confrontations between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters rage in eastern Gaza, Israeli soldiers are trying to move “deeper” into the south of the Strip, he said.

This is “terrifying people”, Abu Azzoum added, many of whom have fled their homes in the north and central areas of Gaza for what Israel said were safer regions in the south.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health has been struggling to update casualty figures as Israeli forces have increasingly targeted hospitals and allied services in the besieged enclave.

On Wednesday, at least 14 people were killed and dozens of others injured in three major strikes. Two of the strikes were on homes in Khan Younis, and the third was on a home in the central Gaza region. At least three people were killed in an attack on Salhi residential towers in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

More than 11,200 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors — have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.

A group of 56 Labour lawmakers go against the party line to officially urge a truce in Israel’s war in Gaza.

Dozens of British opposition lawmakers have voted to call for a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza, underscoring mounting unease within parliamentary ranks regarding Britain’s foreign policy stance.

A group of 56 Labour Party lawmakers went against the party line on Wednesday by voting to amend the government’s legislative agenda to officially urge for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The proposed legislative addition, introduced by the Scottish National Party, said the United Kingdom should “join with the international community in urgently pressing all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire”.

While the amendment did not pass, the strong support from the left-wing Labour Party put pressure on the bloc’s leadership.

More than a third of 198 Labour MPs backed the proposal, including eight members of party leader Keir Starmer’s policy team who abandoned their shadow ministerial posts to voice dissent.

Starmer has taken the same line on the Gaza war as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, calling only for “humanitarian pauses” as opposed to a full ceasefire in Gaza.

Jess Phillips, a Labour deputy who backed the call for a ceasefire, said she was stepping down from her role as shadow domestic abuse and safeguarding minister with a “heavy heart”.

pic.twitter.com/BKPky5uxGy

— Jess Phillips MP (@jessphillips) November 15, 2023

“On this occasion I must vote with my constituents, my head and my heart,” Phillips said in a letter to Starmer posted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“I can see no route where the current military action does anything but put at risk the hope of peace and security for anyone in the region now and in the future.”

Divisions within Labour

The growing disquiet within Labour is challenging Starmer as he seeks to put on a united front ahead of elections next year that Labour is on pace to win, according to polls.

After the vote, Starmer said he regretted that some colleagues “felt unable to support the position”.

“But I wanted to be clear about where I stood, and where I will stand,” Starmer said.

Global pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza has been mounting more than a month into the war, which has killed more than 11,500 Palestinians, including thousands of children.

Israel’s air raids and ground invasion have also displaced 1.5 million people and wrecked the territory’s infrastructure.

Large protests calling for a Gaza ceasefire have swept the UK, including outside parliament during Wednesday’s vote.

Starmer, while opposing a full ceasefire, had sought to toughen the party’s position to say humanitarian pauses “must be longer to deliver humanitarian assistance … a necessary step to an enduring cessation of fighting as soon as possible”.

That amendment was backed by 183 lawmakers, with 290 voting against it.

King Charles III, in his maiden King’s Speech on November 7 outlining the government’s upcoming policy agenda, reiterated the UK’s staunch support for Israel.

He said the government would work to address the world’s “most pressing security challenges”, including “the consequences of the barbaric acts of terrorism against the people of Israel”.

King Charles said Britain would also help bring “humanitarian support into Gaza and [support] the cause of peace and stability in the Middle East”.

At least 25 people have died in a fire at a coal firm’s offices in northern China.

Dozens of workers were also injured in the blaze, which ripped through the four-storey Yongju Coal Company building, in Lvliang city, Shanxi province, just before 7am local time on Thursday.

Officials said emergency services evacuated 63 people from the block after rushing to the scene. However, it was unclear if the fatalities were included in that figure.

The building affected included offices and dormitories – and no coal was being mined at the scene, local media reported.

The fire was brought under control by the afternoon, officials said.

Read more world news:
US and China to reopen direct military communications
Women and children rescued after armed gang surrounds hospital

It comes amid growing concern over fire safety in China following a series of recent deadly blazes.

At least 29 people were killed in a hospital fire in Beijing earlier this year.

As the conflict between Israel and Gaza enters its 41st day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Thursday, November 16, 2023:

Latest developments

• Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed on Thursday that fighter jets had struck the house of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau.
• After four failed attempts to respond to the Israel-Palestine war, the United Nations Security Council passed a Malta-sponsored resolution on “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza on Wednesday. No member state voted against the resolution, 12 voted in favour, and three – Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – abstained.
• The first truck carrying fuel to Gaza since Israeli bombardment started on October 7 arrived through the Rafah border crossing on Wednesday. Over the past few weeks, hospitals, sanitation systems, and water pumps are just a few of the infrastructures that have shut down due to fuel depletion amid a total Israeli siege.
• Two planes from Egypt carrying more than two dozen cancer patients from Gaza arrived in the Turkish capital, Ankara, shortly after midnight on Thursday (about 21:30 GMT, Wednesday), according to the AFP news agency.
• Some 150 demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in Gaza clashed with police outside the Democratic Party’s national committee headquarters in Washington, DC late on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press news agency.

Human impact and fighting

• After relentless bombardment across northern Gaza, including its hospitals, as well as displacement of Palestinians to the south, Israel is indicating an expansion of its assault across the Gaza Strip. “There is no place in Gaza that we will not reach,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli troops along the Gaza border on Wednesday, according to the AP.
• Two Israeli soldiers have been killed while fighting in northern Gaza, Israel’s military announced early on Thursday.
• Deadly Israeli air raids hit two residential buildings in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza’s central petrol station, and a mosque in al-Sabrah neighbourhood of central Gaza on Thursday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
• As Palestinians continue to make the long, taxing journey from north to south Gaza, often by foot, they are also “reporting the presence of dead bodies in the streets”, according to the situation report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released on Wednesday. Some have also reported being arrested, stripped down, and beaten by Israeli soldiers in what was supposed to be a “safe corridor” to flee south, OCHA reported.
• An up-to-date death toll for Gaza could not be made available for the fifth day in a row owing to the collapse of communication and medical services, according to OCHA.
• At least six Palestinians have been arrested in overnight Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa.

Situation at Gaza’s hospitals

• Israeli forces renewed their attack on al-Shifa early on Thursday, with tanks and bulldozers advancing into the hospital and damaging its walls, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum.
• Doctors and medical workers at al-Shifa have been interrogated, while patients, staff, and displaced people are gathered in one place under Israeli custody and have not been afforded safe passage to leave, Abu Azzoum said on Thursday.
• Only one of 24 hospitals in northern Gaza is operational and taking in patients, while another five can only provide limited care to those who are already admitted.
• The Israeli military has removed a social media post, uploaded to X on Thursday, which showed what Israel claimed was proof of weapons being kept inside Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Diplomacy

• US President Joe Biden reiterated claims of Hamas tunnels under al-Shifa Hospital without evidence on Wednesday and said it is “not realistic” to expect Israel to stop the Gaza war, according to Reuters news agency.
• In a highly-anticipated meeting on Wednesday, Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the Israel-Gaza war and the risks of regional escalation.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ramped up his condemnation of Israel, calling it a “terror state” with “unlimited” support from the West in parliament on Wednesday.
• South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that her government may refer Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) as it continues its assault on Gaza. She likened the circumstances of Palestinians to those in apartheid South Africa and called on “countries that have influence over Israel” to stop this “crime against humanity”.
• A four-person delegation of lawyers filed a complaint against Israel at the ICC on Wednesday.
• The defence ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations urged an end to the Israel-Hamas war and for the world to collaborate on setting up humanitarian aid corridors in Gaza at a regional meeting on Wednesday, according to the AP.
• Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat condemned Belize’s decision to recall its ambassador to Israel in a post on X on Wednesday. The Central American country severed its diplomatic ties citing Israel’s “unceasing indiscriminate bombing” and refusal to implement a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a statement on the government press office’s website on Tuesday.

Spokesperson says opponents dropping ‘hundreds’ of drones on military outposts as offensive pushes forward.

Myanmar’s military regime has admitted it is facing “heavy assaults” by anti-coup forces who began a coordinated offensive at the end of last month, claiming to have taken control of several towns in border areas and dozens of military outposts.

Spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said troops were under “heavy assaults from a significant number of armed rebel soldiers” in Shan State in the north, Kayah State in the east and Rakhine State in the west.

Anti-coup fighters were using “hundreds” of drones to drop bombs on military posts, and some sites had to be evacuated, he added.

“We are urgently taking measures to protect against drone bomb attacks effectively,” he said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the generals seized power from the elected government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup in February 2021.

Millions took to the streets to call for the restoration of democracy. But when the military responded with force, some civilians took up arms, joining forces with ethnic armed groups who have long been fighting for self-determination. At least 4,185 civilians and anti-coup activists have been killed in the violence since, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Myanmar non-profit tracking the crackdown.

The new offensive, code-named Operation 1027, began in Shan State near the border with China on October 27 under the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a grouping of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA).

Its aim is to eradicate “oppressive military dictatorship” and fighting has since spread to other areas of the country, including western Rakhine and Chin states, bordering Bangladesh and India.

More than 200,000 people have been displaced by the fighting and at least 75 civilians, including children, have been killed, according to the United Nations.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply concerned by the expansion of conflict”, spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that fighting had forced more than two million people from their homes.

The military has long claimed it is the only organisation that can hold Myanmar together and had ruled the country for 50 years before embarking on reforms that eventually led to Aung San Suu Kyi becoming civilian leader.

Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbours have tried to encourage a peace process, but the generals have ignored their efforts. At a meeting of defence ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Thursday, Indonesia’s Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto reiterated the need for peace.

“We are saddened with a deteriorating situation in Myanmar,” Prabowo said in his opening speech. “Indonesia encourages other ASEAN member states to support Myanmar to find a peaceful and durable solution to the current situation.”

Myanmar’s representatives are barred from ASEAN’s top summits because of their failure to implement an April 2021 agreement with the grouping in which they agreed to end the violence.

The AA, which had previously observed a ceasefire with the military that was agreed shortly before the coup, said on Wednesday that dozens of police and military men had surrendered or been captured as its forces advanced.

Anti-coup fighters in Kayah State on the Thai border, meanwhile, have been battling the military near the state capital, Loikaw.

Military spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said the town’s prison and police office were “being targeted and attacked”.

A video posted on social media showed wounded troops in Kayah, surrendering and being offered medical help.

“We are ready to shoot you right now but we won’t do that. You raise the white flag and walk out, nothing will happen to you,” a fighter who identified himself as the vice commander-in-chief of the rebel Karenni National Defence Force is heard telling the soldiers. The video was verified by the Reuters news agency.