- Requests that all personnel and patients be evacuated completely.
- UN chief says Israel must remove barriers in order to provide help.
CAIRO: The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that Israeli forces had encircled two more Gaza hospitals on Sunday, trapping medical personnel under intense gunfire. Israel also claimed to have taken 480 fighters hostage in ongoing fighting at Gaza’s main Al Shifa hospital.
In the midst of intense shooting and heavy bombardment, Israeli tanks unexpectedly retreated into the vicinity of the Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing one of the Red Crescent’s employees, according to the organization.
The Red Crescent stated in a statement that Israeli armoured forces had fully immobilized and sealed off Al-Amal Hospital, conducting major bulldozing operations around the hospital. “All of our teams are in extreme danger at the moment,” the statement continued. It stated that Israeli soldiers were firing smoke bombs into the neighborhood to drive out its population and were now demanding that all employees, patients, and displaced people leave Al Amal’s grounds.
Numerous patients and medical personnel had been taken into custody by Israeli soldiers at Al Shifa in Gaza City, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Seven people were murdered by an Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah, the southernmost town of Gaza on the Egyptian border that has become the last haven for half of the uprooted population of Gaza, according to health officials.
In an update released on Sunday, the health ministry stated that since October 7, Israel’s air and ground offensive had resulted in at least 32,226 Palestinian deaths—84 of them in the last 24 hours—and 74,518 injuries.
Israel is urged by Guterres to eliminate barriers.
In the meantime, UN chief Antonio Guterres stated in Cairo on Sunday that “Israel removing the remaining obstacles and chokepoints to relief” is crucial in order to provide the essential food to famine-threatened Gaza.
During a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Guterres reiterated his plea for a “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” to alleviate “the plight of Palestinian children, women, and men struggling to survive the nightmare in Gaza.”
The bulk of the 2.4 million people living in Gaza have been forced to flee their homes due to the nearly six months of fighting and siege, and the region’s civilian infrastructure has been decimated. On Saturday, he paid a visit to the Rafah border crossing. The El-Arish airport in Egypt and the Rafah border crossing were dubbed “essential arteries for life-saving aid into Gaza” by Guterres.
Mossad and CIA chiefs depart Qatar.
Relevantly, a person briefed on the talks told AFP that US intelligence head William Burns and his Israeli counterpart David Barnea left Qatar late on Saturday after discussions on a deal for the release of prisoners and a cease-fire in Gaza.
The informed source went on, “The discussions concentrated on specifics and a ratio for the prisoner exchange,” adding that “technical teams remain in Doha.”
Weeks of secret negotiations have been held by US, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators in an attempt to broker a second ceasefire.
In east Lebanon, one person died.
Meanwhile, four people were injured in an overnight fire in the east of Lebanon, according to an AFP correspondent, while a man was killed by an Israeli attack on a car close to the Syrian border on Sunday, a security source reported.
“Syrian driver of a vehicle in Suwairi’s eastern Bekaa area was killed by Israeli fighter jets,” a security source told AFP, asking anonymity due to security concerns.
Before announcing that the driver had died, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency had earlier on Sunday claimed that a hit on a car in Suwairi had injured him.
According to an AFP correspondent, Israeli strikes overnight on Sunday wounded four people who lived close in buildings affiliated with Hezbollah that had been abandoned for a while.
Afterwards, in reaction to the Israeli strikes, Hezbollah claimed to have fired “more than 60 Katyusha-type rockets” at two Israeli military locations in the occupied Golan Heights.
