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.
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.
Talks to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas are 90 per cent complete, but key issues remain that need to be bridged, a senior Palestinian official involved in the talks told the BBC.
The Palestinian official shared details of the discussions being held in Doha which include the potential creation of a buffer zone several kilometres wide along the length of Israel’s border with Gaza.
Israel would retain a military presence within this area. With these issues resolved, a three-stage ceasefire could be agreed within days, the official said.
The deal would include an exchange of 20 Palestinian prisoners for every female soldier released in the first of three stages of the ceasefire. These are not thought to include the senior Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, whose release Israel is expected to veto.
Israeli hostages would be released in stages, as it is believed that Hamas still need to locate some of the missing hostages. Of 96 hostages still held in Gaza, 62 are assumed by Israel to still be alive.
Gazan civilians would be able to return to the north, under a system with Egyptian/Qatari oversight, and there would be around 500 trucks per day bringing aid into the strip, the official said.
Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 17 Palestinians, eight of them at a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, medics said, as the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of a hospital in the north, Reuters reports.
Palestinian medics said eight people, including children, were killed in the Musa Bin Nusayr School that sheltered displaced families in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said in a statement the strike targeted Hamas fighters operating from a command centre embedded inside the school. It said Hamas militants used the place to plan and execute attacks against Israeli forces.
Also in Gaza City, medics said four Palestinians were killed when an airstrike hit a car.
At least five other Palestinians were killed in two separate airstrikes in Rafah and Khan Younis south of the enclave.
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, where the army has operated since October, Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said the army ordered staff to evacuate the hospital and move patients and injured people toward another hospital in the area.
Abu Safiya said the mission was “next to impossible” because staff did not have ambulances to move the patients.
This picture shows the aftermath of an Israeli strike that targeted the Musa bin Nusayr School in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City on December 22. — AFP
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that its correspondents in Gaza have lost touch with journalists inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital as Israel’s attacks on the facility continue.
The European Islamophobia Report of 2023 says Israel’s war on Gaza has “functioned as a geopolitical catalyst of anti-Muslim racism in Europe”, with an increase in hate crimes and a rise in Islamophobic rhetoric and actions by European governments, Al Jazeera reports.
The report, which monitors 34 countries in Europe, said there has been a spike in the number of physical and verbal assaults on Muslims in the wake of the war, including in countries like Norway, Spain and Greece.
Several European governments have also framed pro-Palestine solidarity as terrorism, it said, with countries like Germany, France, and Denmark enforcing restrictive measures, such as banning demonstrations and imposing fines on pro-Palestinian symbols.
