Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 395

Multiple precincts in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, experienced issues with the vote-counting machines early morning, election officials said — but people were still able to cast their ballots, CNN reports.

“Prior to the opening of the polls, the Bedford County Elections Office received calls from several precincts around the county reporting an issue with the tabulator machines. We identified the issue and sent support teams to resolve the problem,” Jeffrey Gable, the county’s elections director, said in a statement. .

“The ability to vote has not been impacted and at this time all sites are being addressed.”

About 50 miles away in Cambria County, officials have requested that voting time be extended after a “software malfunction” disrupted voters’ abilities to scan their ballots.

The Pennsylvania Department of State is working with county officials to address the issue, spokesperson Matt Heckel said.

Wisconsin’s election is running smoothly so far, Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the state Elections Commission, said in a news briefing according to CNN.

“So far everything is going well, all of our polling places have opened as expected,” Wolfe said.

She added that “no issues have been reported” to the state commission from any of the state’s roughly 3,700 polling places, including no reports of threats.

The polling places are run by municipal clerks, not the commission itself.

Municipal workers began demolishing seven homes in occupied east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighbourhood, Palestinian residents and the municipality said, after an Israeli court called their construction illegal, AFP reports.

“This morning the Jerusalem Municipality, with a security escort from the Israel police, began its enforcement against illegal buildings in the Al-Bustan neighbourhood in Silwan,” Jerusalem’s Israeli-controlled city hall said in a statement.

Activist Fakhri Abu Diab, one of those affected by the demolition, confirmed that “at least seven homes have been demolished, and the operation is ongoing”.

He said that both houses and apartments were affected.

“They demolished my home, which I had renovated after it was previously demolished earlier this year, as well as my son’s house, Haitham Ayed’s family home, and four homes belonging to the Al-Ruwaidi family,” Abu Diab told AFP.

Ireland accepted the appointment of a full Palestinian ambassador for the first time, after Dublin formally recognised a Palestinian state earlier this year, AFP reports.

Senior ministers confirmed that Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid would step up from her current position as Palestinian Head of Mission to Ireland.

In May Dublin said it was recognising Palestine as “a sovereign and independent state” comprising the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and agreed to establish full diplomatic relations.

Last month, the Palestinian Authority formally notified Dublin of its intention to upgrade its representation in Ireland from a diplomatic mission to a resident embassy under the 1961 Vienna Convention which guarantees protection for diplomatic staff.

The upgrade means that the diplomatic mission will now have the full range of privileges and immunities applicable under the Vienna Convention.

An American soldier has died after being injured during Washington’s problem-plagued operation to establish a temporary aid pier on the coast of Gaza, the US military said, AFP reports.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley, a recently retired motor transport operator,” Captain Sheila Milford-Glover, spokesperson for the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, said in a statement.

She did not say when Stanley died or what kind of injury he had sustained, specifying only that the soldier had been receiving treatment in a long-term care facility.

He was one of three US military personnel who suffered non-combat injuries at sea during the pier operation. The two others suffered minor injuries, a sprained ankle and a hurt back, the military said in May.

At least one Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in a beach town south of Beirut, Lebanese state media said, as other deadly strikes hit scattered locations across the country and armed group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel, Reuters reports.

The attack on the beach town of Jiyyeh left a massive smoke column billowing out of an apartment building. It was not immediately clear if the strike was an assassination attempt, and no evacuation warning was given before it was carried out.

Israeli strikes also killed five people near the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, including two killed in a strike on a car, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Lebanon’s state news agency said that it estimated Israeli air strikes and widespread detonation of homes had destroyed more than 40,000 housing units in the country’s border region.

Dr Hossam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has shared a live video documenting Israel’s bombardment of the medical facility in northern Gaza today, which instilled panic and fear among patients and staff, Al Jazeera reports.

The video, verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, was posted on Abu Safiya’s Instagram account.

It captures the upper floor of the hospital being bombed by Israeli forces with nurses and wounded patients fleeing as the bombardment intensifies.

“Patients and children run amid the Israeli occupation bombing the hospital and water tanks! As if the siege is not enough and patients and doctors must die of thirst,” Abu Safiya wrote.

At least four people have been killed in Israeli shelling of the Alami area in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.

Meanwhile, in southern Gaza, Israeli shelling targeted a motorcycle, killing two Palestinians and injuring an unknown number of others in Khirbet al-Adas, north of Rafah.

According to medical sources, 44 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids in Gaza since dawn, 30 of them in northern Gaza.

The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs has reported a worsening policy of deliberate medical negligence toward injured and sick inmates in Israeli prisons since the Gaza war began last year, according to the Wafa news agency, Al Jazeera reports.

Commission’s lawyers who visited various Israeli prisons to assess the conditions of sick Palestinians there have reported that significant medical neglect, malnutrition, and physical violence had led to severe weight loss and overall deterioration in the health of the inmates, Wafa said.

Kamal Adwan Hospital has been targeted by Israeli quadcopters. Injuries have not been confirmed yet, but this is not the first time the hospital has been targeted, Hind Khoudary reports for Al Jazeera.

“There are people still trying to rescue and pull more bodies from the al-Masry family house in Beit Lahiya, where at least 25 Palestinians were killed, including 13 children,” she said.

There have been no ambulances, and no civil defence teams for the past 24 hours after Israeli forces forced them to evacuate, Khoudary said, adding that leaflets have been dropped asking the people in Beit Lahiya to evacuate from that area.

“There is only one hospital working in the northern Gaza Strip, and that is Kamal Adwan. It has no water or medicine,” she added.

At least 43,391 people have been killed in the year-old Gaza conflict, the health ministry said in a statement, AFP reports.

The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours, the statement added, which said 102,347 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began on October 7, 2023.

A pro-Palestinian activist in France has been sentenced to three years in prison for “glorifying terrorism” on social media, reported, Anadolu Agency reports, citing broadcaster France 3.

Amira Zaiter, an activist from the southern city of Nice, was placed into custody on Sept. 19 for the glorification of terrorism, glorification of crimes against humanity, and hate speech on social media, the channel said.

The founder of De Nice a Gaza organization (From Nice to Gaza) was sentenced to three years of imprisonment, with two years suspended and one year under an electronic bracelet.

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Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the Israeli army has withdrawn several brigades from southern Lebanon amid progress in efforts to reach a deal, Al Jazeera reports.

Citing informed sources, it said officials involved in negotiations assess a deal to be reached with Hezbollah within a week and a half to two weeks.

In the meantime, Israeli forces are waiting for a decision from the political echelon in Jerusalem, the newspaper said.

Iran is not seeking “escalation” but has the right to “legitimate defence”, its foreign minister said in Pakistan, vowing to respond to last month’s Israeli strikes on its military sites, AFP reports.

“Unlike Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran doesn’t seek escalation, however, we reserve our inherent right to legitimate defence,” Abbas Araghchi said during a news conference, alongside his Pakistan counterpart.

“We will certainly respond to the Israeli aggression in a proper time and in a proper manner,” and “in a very measured and well-calculated manner”, said Araghchi who is on a two-day official visit to Pakistan.

Since the strikes, Israel has warned Iran against retaliating, while Tehran vowed to respond.

The death toll from an Israeli air attack on the al-Masry family home in the town of Beit Lahiya in besieged northern Gaza has risen to 25, according to the Wafa news agency, Al Jazeera reports.

The report citing medical sources said the victims included 13 children and that more people are still under the rubble.

The area has been under intense bombardment since October 6, when Israel’s military began a sweeping air and ground assault in northern Gaza, focusing on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi condemned Israel’s unrestrained military aggression in the Middle East and its “genocidal actions” against civilians, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

“I and my dear brother Foreign Minister both condemned Israel’s unrestrained military aggression in the Middle East, its genocidal actions against innocent civilians and its illegal measures in occupied territories … and constitute the root cause of all tensions in the Middle East,” FM Ishaq Dar said speaking at a joint press conference in Islamabad with the Iranian FM.

FM Dar reiterated Pakistan’s call for establishing a viable, independent and contiguous State of Palestine based on the Pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.

More than 100 patients including children suffering from trauma injuries and chronic diseases will be evacuated from Gaza in a rare transfer out of the besieged enclave, a World Health Organisation official said, Reuters reports.

“These are ad hoc measures. What we have requested repeatedly is a sustained medevac (medical evacuation) outside of Gaza,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, adding that 12,000 people were awaiting transfer.

The patients will travel in a large convoy via the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel before flying to the United Arab Emirates, he added, and then a portion will travel to Romania.

Egypt has condemned Israel’s decision to ban the United Nations agency for Palestinians, calling it an “unacceptable disregard” for the UN, its agencies and the international community, AFP reports.

Israel officially informed the United Nations on Monday of its decision to cut ties with UNRWA, following a vote by Israeli lawmakers to bar the organisation, which is seen as vital for Palestinians.

“Egypt strongly condemns Israel’s withdrawal from the agreement governing the operations of UNRWA and its formal suspension of operations,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement posted on Facebook late Monday.

The ministry called the move a “dangerous development” aimed at erasing the Palestinian cause, particularly the issue of refugees and their right of return.

It added that the decision represented “a new chapter in Israel’s blatant and systematic violations of international law and international humanitarian law”.

Sources have told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces are again storming the city of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.

Sources also reported that Israeli police forces have stormed neighbourhoods in Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem.

France’s foreign minister will travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Wednesday seeking to press Israel to engage diplomatically to end the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon after the US presidential election is over, Reuters reports.

“The United States plays an essential role in ending the Israeli-Arab conflict,” Jean-Noel Barrot said on France 2 television when asked whether a win for former President Donald Trump could boost Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We are alongside the US, notably on Lebanon, to propose peace formulas to ensure a lasting peace in the region.”

“The war has lasted far too long and the use of force must give way to the use of dialogue and diplomacy,” Barrot said.

Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 30 Palestinians since Monday night, Palestinian media and medics said, as the Israeli army tightened its siege on northern areas of the enclave, Reuters reports.

An airstrike damaged two houses in the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, where the army has carried out new operations since October 5, and killed at least 20 people late on Monday, news agency Wafa and Hamas media said.

The Gaza health ministry did not immediately confirm the toll. Four other people were killed in the central Gazan town of Al-Zawayda around midnight on Monday, medics said.

Palestinian health officials said six people had also been killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City and Deir Al-Balah in the central area of the narrow enclave.

The Israeli military said, without giving details, that its forces had “eliminated terrorists” in the central Gaza Strip and Jabalia area. Israeli troops had also located weapons and explosives over the past day in the southern Rafah area, where “terrorist infrastructure sites” had been eliminated, it said.

Palestinians said the new attacks and Israeli orders for people to evacuate were aimed at emptying two northern Gaza towns and a refugee camp to create buffer zones.

The Israeli military said it intercepted a drone approaching from the east over southern Israel in the Dead Sea area, AFP reports.

“A UAV that crossed into Israeli territory from the east was intercepted by the IAF (Israeli air force),” the military said in a statement, without specifying the drone’s origin.