Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is currently without power after Israeli drone attacks hit its generators and fuel tanks, Al Jazeera reports according to the Anadolu news agency.
Marwan al-Hams, the director of field hospitals in Gaza’s Health Ministry, told Anadolu that the situation at the hospital was “dire”, saying communication between medical staff had been cut off.
Hamas has condemned the Israeli military’s ongoing assault on the hospital in northern Gaza, describing it as an “unprecedented crime against humanity”, Al Jazeera reports.
“The occupation army continues its brutal bombing and systematic destruction of areas in the north of the Gaza Strip, especially Jabalia, its refugee camp and Beit Lahia,” it said in a statement yesterday.
It added that the strikes have been targeting shelters, schools and especially the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Hamas also said that threats were made to evacuate patients, the injured and displaced people from the hospital, calling it “a crime of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement” amid international silence and inaction.
Former US State Department official Mike Casey, who served as a deputy political counsellor at the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, described his experience as a diplomat in Jerusalem as a humiliation.
“It’s frankly embarrassing … to see just the way we give in to the demands of the Israeli government and continue to support what the Israeli government is doing even though we know it’s wrong,” Casey told Al Jazeera.
“And I’ve not seen that in any other country that I’ve served in.”
Asked why US government policy is what it is, Casey said he believes part of the reason is that “there’s no concern for Palestinian suffering”.
After four years in his post, Casey resigned in July over what he described as the US government’s unwavering support for Israel despite its devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has ordered the closure and evacuation of one of the last hospitals still partly functioning in a besieged area on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, forcing medics to search for a way to bring hundreds of patients and staff to safety.
The head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, Husam Abu Safiya, told Reuters via text message that obeying the order to shut down was “next to impossible” because there were not enough ambulances to get patients out.
“We currently have nearly 400 civilians inside the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators. We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment, and time,” said Abu Safiya.
“We are sending this message under heavy bombardment and direct targeting of the fuel tanks, which if hit will cause a large explosion and mass casualties of the civilians inside,” he said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on Abu Safiya’s remarks. It claimed that on Friday it had sent fuel and food to the hospital and helped evacuate more than 100 patients and caregivers to other Gaza hospitals, some in coordination with the Red Cross, for their own safety.
Abu Safiya said the military had ordered patients and staff to be evacuated to another hospital where conditions are even worse. Photos from inside the hospital showed patients on beds crammed into corridors to keep them away from windows. Reuters could not immediately verify those images.
Mourners pray during the funeral of Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip on Dec 22, 2024. — Reuters
As an Israeli strike on Abu Samra family’s house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah killed at least 13, an AFP photographer saw residents searching through the debris for survivors, while others looked for belongings they could salvage.
In a nearby compound, bodies covered in blankets lay on the sandy ground.
The Israeli military claimed it targeted an Islamic Jihad fighter who was operating in Deir el-Balah.
“We are… losing loved ones every day,” said Deir el-Balah resident
Naim al-Ramlawi.
“I pray to God that a truce will be reached soon” and would allow Gazans to finally “live a decent life, instead of this miserable life”, he said.
Separately, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said an strike on a school building in Gaza City killed eight, including four children. AFP images showed mangled concrete slabs and iron beams strewn amid patches of blood at the damaged school building.
People search for survivors at the site of an Israeli strike that targeted the Abu Samra family home in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Dec 22, 2024. — Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against Yemen’s Houthi rebels after they fired a missile at Tel Aviv, warning that Israel would target what he described as the last remaining arm of “Iran’s axis of evil”, AFP reports.
The Houthis struck Israel’s commercial hub on Saturday with what they claimed was a ballistic missile, injuring 16 people and forcing many to leave their homes following the pre-dawn attack.
“As we acted with force against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis… with force, determination and sophistication,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.
The latest Israeli strike against the Houthis was on Thursday, with Israeli warplanes striking Sanaa for the first time. The Israeli response came soon after the rebels fired a missile that damaged an Israeli school.
On Sunday, Netanyahu acknowledged Washington’s backing, saying that Israel was “not alone” in its fight against the Houthis. “The US, as well as other countries, see the Houthis as a threat not only to international shipping - but to the international order”, Netanyahu said in his video statement.
In a similar statement issued earlier this week, Netanyahu said, “After Hamas, Hezbollah and the (Bashar al-)Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last arm of Iran’s axis of evil.”
Gaza’s civil defence agency has said that Israeli strikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the territory yesterday. The violence came even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was “closer than ever”.
On the ground in Gaza, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.
The military also confirmed a separate strike further north, on a school in Gaza City. Bassal said eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for displaced Palestinians.
It was the latest of numerous similar strikes against schools-turned-shelters during the offensive.
Bassal said in a statement that a separate strike, overnight into Sunday, killed three people in Rafah, in the south. And a drone strike on Sunday morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, the spokesman added.
Later on Sunday, the civil defence agency said seven people were killed when Israeli drones struck tents in the humanitarian area of Al-Mawasi in western Khan Younis, while the Israeli military claimed it had targeted a “Hamas terrorist”.
Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam has said, raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged territory, AFP reports.
“Of the meagre 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians,” Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday.
“For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours,” Oxfam added.
Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups have been “continually prevented from delivering life-saving aid” in northern Gaza since October 6 this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the territory. “Thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked it’s impossible to know exact numbers,” Oxfam said.
“At the beginning of December, humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water.”
Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities. “A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians,” it said.
Two men sit with cups of hot beverages at sunset atop a concrete water storage tank overlooking the Hamad Residential City complex in the north of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Dec 22, 2024. — AFP
The Gaza Government Media Office has urged the World Health Organisation to urgently deploy a delegation to protect Kamal Adwan Hospital and its staff, patients and displaced Palestinians from Israeli attacks, Al Jazeera reports.
It said in a statement that bombing and threatening hospitals is a humanitarian and moral crime as well as a flagrant violation of international laws and norms.
“These attacks are ongoing and have not stopped for nearly 80 days since the ground aggression on the northern Gaza Strip Governorate began, which has claimed the lives of thousands of martyrs, left many missing, wounded or detained,” the statement said.
The office added that attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital are part of Israel’s plan to systematically dismantle the healthcare system in the territory. It said it holds Israel, the US and other countries participating in the “genocide” like Germany, the UK and France responsible.
The military says its forces completed an operation in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, and have moved to the areas in the west of the Beit Hanoon neighbourhood, Al Jazeera reports.
A military statement said troops killed many fighters and destroyed their infrastructure above and below ground during the offensive in Beit Lahiya.
The operation around Beit Hanoon has been launched as a result of intelligence information suggesting fighter activity in the neighbourhood, the statement claimed. Fighter jets and artillery units struck the area before soldiers moved in, it added.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, delivering aid to people in Gaza, which Israel has banned, has reported that there is a 1sq km rubbish pile in Khan Younis, Al Jazeera reports.
“Every day we see children, animals and families scavenging through the trash, looking for scraps of food to eat or material to burn to keep warm,” said the agency’s spokesperson Louise Wateridge from the southern part of the enclave.
The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says more than 556,000 children in the Gaza Strip have received a second dose of the poliovirus vaccine through health centres, mobile medical points and door-to-door efforts, Al Jazeera reports.
In a post on X, the Palestinian foreign ministry has held the UN Security Council responsible for its “failure to stop the war of extermination and displacement”.
“The Ministry holds the UN Security Council fully responsible for this failure to fulfil its legal and moral responsibilities, and calls on it to compel the occupying state to stop its genocide and crimes,” the post read.
Israeli officials have stated that the Israeli government is still far from reaching a prisoner swap agreement with Hamas, Anadolu reports.
According to a report on Israeli state television KAN, unnamed Israeli officials shared their views on the ongoing negotiations for a prisoner swap.
The officials mentioned that there are still significant issues in the talks between Israel and Hamas and that the situation is far from moving toward a mutually acceptable formula.
The officials confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of halting the attacks on Gaza without first destroying Hamas.
They emphasised that, under the current circumstances, the likelihood of reaching an agreement is low.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said “If Hezbollah does not withdraw beyond the Litani [River] and tries to violate the ceasefire, we will crush its head,” Al Jazeera reports citing Israeli media.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan quoted him as remarking on a visit to a military outpost inside Lebanese territory.
He added Israeli forces have “pulled out the snake’s teeth”, about the armed Lebanese group.
At least 24 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza so far today, Al Jazeera reports.
These included eight Palestinians killed in a school attack in Gaza City,
seven killed in two attacks on Jabalia and four killed in a vehicle in Gaza City.
Four more people were killed across attacks in the Shujayea neighbourhood in northwestern Gaza City and in Nuseirat in the central part of the territory.
One child was also killed in a drone attack on a group of people at a marketplace in the Bureij refugee camp.
The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 45,259 people have been killed during more than 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.
The toll includes 32 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 107,627 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since fighting broke out on October 7, 2023.
Israeli occupation forces raided the town of Tammoun, in the northern West Bank province of Tubas, Wafareports citing local sources.
According to eyewitnesses, Israeli undercover units infiltrated the town and conducted raids on two homes. The forces reportedly sneaked into the area under the cover of darkness, creating an atmosphere of fear and tension among the residents.
These incursions are part of a broader and growing trend of Israeli military assaults in Palestinian areas, which have intensified over recent months. They frequently involve violence, collective punishment, and the arbitrary detention of individuals.
Israeli forces have relentlessly targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, marking an escalation in attacks against medical facilities, Wafareports.
The hospital, which serves as a vital lifeline for thousands in the region, has suffered direct bombing, artillery shelling, and sniper fire, causing significant damage and risking the lives of both patients and medical staff.
According to medical sources, the Israeli forces have been bombing the hospital with shells and artillery, while snipers have targeted various hospital departments.
The attacks have led to severe damage to hospital infrastructure, and communication with the medical team inside has been severed. In response, medical staff have huddled together in a small, protected area of the hospital, seeking shelter from the continuous barrage of explosions and gunfire.
Israeli occupation forces have destroyed approximately 70 per cent of the homes and buildings in Jabalia refugee camp, located in the northern Gaza Strip, during their ongoing military offensive, Wafareports citing a report published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The report described the camp, which was once one of the most densely populated places in the world, as now resembling a “ghost town.” Prior to the Israeli assault, Jabalia was home to tens of thousands of refugees, but the recent destruction has left the area unrecognisable.
According to Haaretz, Israeli forces began their offensive in Jabalia on October 5, 2024, as part of the broader military campaign that has devastated Gaza. This is the third time Israeli forces have attacked the camp, with previous raids occurring in December 2023 and May 2024.
Save the Children International Humanitarian Director Rachel Cummings, who is in Gaza, has said that the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate daily, especially for children, Al Jazeera reports.
“What we do as a humanitarian organisation is to provide immediate alleviation of suffering, but we know that what we’re doing is really a drop in the ocean in terms of meeting the needs of all the children in Gaza,” she said.
“Winter’s upon us and it’s very bitterly cold. What we hear from children and their families is that they’re so ill-equipped. It’s difficult for families to live with any dignity in this context,” she told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, adding that there is open sewage in the street, and access to food and clean water remains extremely difficult.
She said the reports are very concerning for children in northern Gaza, where an Israeli siege has been ongoing for more than 70 days.
“We need an immediate ceasefire, we need the world to stop the bombing of children in Gaza, and we need safe passage and access to humanitarian assistance,” she added.
Palestinians inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip on December 22. — Reuters
A child is among the Palestinians detained by Israeli forces across the occupied territory since yesterday evening, according to prisoners’ groups, Al Jazeera reports.
The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said the arrests were made in the occupied governorates of Nablus, Ramallah, Tubas and Tulkarem.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes overnight and killed at least 28 Palestinians, including at one family’s home and at a school building the military said was used by Hamas, AFP reports.
Civil agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said in a statement that at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.
Bassal said that eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the bombardment.
Bassal said an overnight strike killed three people in Rafah, in the south.
And a drone strike hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, Bassal said.
