“Our priority is for the massacre in Gaza to end and for lasting peace to be established in the region,” spokesperson Zeki Akturk said, referring to “despicable attacks” by Israeli forces “on refugee camps and schools where displaced Palestinians seek refuge”.
“It is concerning that these attacks have threatened regional stability. Every step that could lead to a larger conflict must be avoided,” Akturk added.
ICC allows UK to submit arguments on jurisdiction over Israelis in Gaza case
Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have ruled that the United Kingdom can submit legal arguments to judges mulling the prosecution’s request for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, Reuters reports.
Court documents made public showed that the UK, an ICC member state, filed a request with the court earlier this month to provide written observations on whether “the court can exercise jurisdiction over Israeli nationals, in circumstances where Palestine cannot exercise criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals (under) the Oslo Accords”.
The judges said the court would also accept submissions from other interested parties on the legal issue but set a July 12 deadline for filings.
Granting the UK’s request might delay the judges’ pending decision on arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over Israel’s bombardment in Gaza, as ICC prosecutor Karim Khan had requested in May.Canada imposes sanctions on 7 Israeli settlers
Canada’s Foreign Ministry has imposed sanctions on seven Israeli settlers and five entities in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.
“We remain deeply concerned by extremist settler violence in the West Bank and condemn such acts, not only for the significant impact they have on Palestinian lives but also for the corrosive impact they have on prospects for lasting peace,” Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said in a statement.
Those targeted include Ben-Zion Gopstein, founder and leader of the right-wing group Lehava, which opposes Jewish assimilation with non-Jews.
Canada sets out evacuation plans in Lebanon: report
Canada’s military has drawn up evacuation plans to extract about 20,000 Canadians from Lebanon as tensions intensify and threats of full-scale scale fighting increase, Al Jazeera reports.
The Canadian news outlet CBC reported that General Wayne Eyre, the chief of the defence staff, said that the plan relied on Canada’s allies to help facilitate the evacuation.
“We can’t do it alone,” Eyre said. “It will very much be a coalition effort, and we are tightly tied in — very tight — with our allies.”
But despite the plans for a possible evacuation, Eyre acknowledged that he was “very concerned” about the prospect a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah this summer.
He added that a military team was currently in Lebanon and coordinating with the embassy in Beirut.Only fraction of our health centres operational in Gaza: UNRWA
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said that only a fraction of their health centres are operational in Gaza,
According to a post on their X account, the UN agency said their teams in Nuseirat were serving families, but a severe shortage of medicine and fuel was hampering lifesaving operations.“Safe and sustained aid access can’t wait any longer,” it said.
Displacement the ‘new normal’ for Palestinians in Gaza
The majority of people in Gaza City’s Shujayea and Tuffa neighbourhoods — located in the eastern part of the city — are displaced Palestinians, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
They have found themselves in another dilemma, pushed to move west after the Israeli military issued sharp evacuation orders, sending text messages and dropping leaflets. Those orders came around 30 minutes into the military’s operations in the area.
People are being forced into internal displacement over and over. It is becoming part of their daily routine, a new normal.
Some families are still trapped in areas under evacuation orders, given the dense presence of quadcopters, surveillance drones and heavy artillery. The operation continues
Amputations soar but prostheses and painkillers lacking in besieged Gaza
There is little Gaza’s doctors can do to alleviate the pain that three-year-old Suhaib Khuzaiq still feels from a shrapnel injury that caused his leg to be amputated above the knee in December.
“He is in pain and in need of painkillers and a prosthetic limb that is only available outside Gaza”, his father Ali Khuzaiq, 31, told AFP from Gaza City’s Al-Ahli hospital where Suhaib receives treatment.
On December 6, an Israeli air strike on their neighbourhood of Tal Al-Hawa, southwest of Gaza City, injured Suhaib and destroyed their home, displacing the family who are now staying with relatives, Khuzaiq said.
The offensive and Israel’s blockade have caused a shortage of medicines and destroyed much of Gaza’s medical capacity.
As a result, amputations have become a key way of handling injuries that in other circumstances might have been treated differently, causing their number to soar further.
Citing data from Unicef, the chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Wednesday that in Gaza “every day 10 children… are losing one leg or two legs on average,” adding that it meant “around 2,000 children” had lost legs since the start of the offensive.
Unicef’s spokesman Jonathan Crickx later told AFP that difficulties in gathering data in a conflict zone meant the figures were only “estimates” that would take time to verify, but that the agency “has met many children who have lost limbs”.
Gazans struggle to feed their children under Israeli campaign
Famine approaches slowly for Gazans, who spend hours in queues for a few ladles of cooked food and the chance to fill plastic containers with drinkable water after nearly nine months of Israel’s military campaign in the enclave.
Sometimes there is nothing to queue for in the shattered streets and crowded schools that have been turned into shelters for the vast majority of Palestininans displaced by bombardment.
“We found no water, food or drink as you can see. We walk long distances to search for water that is not even available,” said Abdel Rahman Khadourah, looking for somewhere to get water in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Despite concerted international efforts, the global hunger monitor said this week that Gaza remains at high risk of famine, with about a fifth of the territory’s population still facing “catastrophic” food insecurity.
On Wednesday Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza said a child had died from malnutrition and dehydration, Gaza health ministry says bombardment death toll at 37,765
The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 37,765 people have been killed during more than eight months of Israeli bombardment, AFP reports
The toll includes at least 47 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 86,429 people had been wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7
Israel army says soldier killed in West Bank
The Israeli military said a soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in an operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, the latest violence in the Palestinian territory, AFP reports.
Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that a young Palestinian man was wounded in the face by shrapnel during the latest military raid.
Captain Alon Sacgiu, 22, “fell during an operation in the Jenin sector”, the military said in a brief statement, without giving details of the circumstances of his death.
Another soldier was seriously wounded and taken to hospital, the military said.
Wafa said Israeli troops stormed Jenin shortly before midnight and were deployed until dawn in the city and its outskirts.
Troops “deployed dozens of sniper soldiers on the roofs of commercial buildings and houses and in the neighbourhoods of the city and its commercial centre,” the Palestinian agency reported on its English language website.
When contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it had withdrawn from Jenin but gave no further details of its operation.
Girl dies of malnutrition in Gaza as Israel bombs north and south
Another child died of malnutrition in northern Gaza overnight and six people were killed and several wounded in renewed Israeli bombing of residential areas of Gaza City, Palestinian health officials have said, Reuters reports.
In the southern city of Rafah, a one-time place of refuge where Israel says it is close to completing an almost month-long operation against Hamas fighters, residents said the military had flattened several districts over the past few days.
“We are being starved in Gaza City, and are being hunted by tanks and planes with no hope that this war is ever ending,” Mohammad Jamal, 25, a resident of Gaza City, told Reuters via a chat app.
The death of another girl in Kamal Adwan Hospital late on Wednesday raised the number of children who have died of malnutrition and dehydration to at least 31, a health official said, adding that the war made recording such cases difficult.
Israel denies accusations it has created the famine conditions, blaming aid agencies for distribution problems and accusing Hamas of diverting aid, allegations the militants deny.At least one person killed after Israel shells home near central Gaza: report
Israeli forces have hit a house with artillery fire near Bureij camp in central Gaza, killing at least one person and injuring others, Al Jazeera staffers on the ground report.
It comes after a spate of overnight attacks we reported in northern Gaza killed nine people, AJ highlighted.
SEE: Mapping 7,400 cross-border attacks between Israel and Lebanon
Tensions between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah seem to be escalating as Israel’s offensive on Gaza nears nine months.
An Al Jazeera report quotes the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) as saying that Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon exchanged at least 7,400 attacks across the border from Oct 7, 2023, to June 21, 2024.
Israel conducted about 83 per cent of these attacks, totalling 6,142 incidents, killing at least 543 people in Lebanon.
Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,258 attacks that killed at least 21 Israelis.
