Israel Announces Humanitarian Pause in Parts of Gaza
The military said it would cease activity in Al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (0700-1700 GMT) until further notice, areas where it had not renewed ground operations since March, when it resumed its Gaza offensive.
Designated secure routes for convoys delivering food and medicine will also be in place permanently from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., the military said.
The Egyptian state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said on Sunday that aid started moving towards Gaza from Egypt. Hours earlier Israel began aid airdrops in what it described as an effort to ease the humanitarian conditions in the enclave.
On Thursday, the U.N. said humanitarian pauses in Gaza would allow 'the scale up of humanitarian assistance' and said Israel had not been providing enough route alternatives for its convoys, hindering aid access.
International alarm over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has increased and as Israel and the U.S. appeared on Friday to abandon ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, saying it had become clear that the militants did not want a deal.
Aid organizations said last week there was mass hunger among Gaza's 2.2 million people, with food running out after Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March, before resuming it in May with new restrictions.
Dozens of Gazans have died of malnutrition in the past few weeks, according to the Gaza Health Ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. A total of 127 people have died due to malnutrition, including 85 children, since the start of the war, the ministry said.
Israel says there is no starvation in Gaza and that the aid halt was meant to pressure Hamas into giving up dozens of hostages it is still holding in Gaza.
After letting in aid in May, Israel said there was enough food in Gaza but that the United Nations was failing to distribute it. The U.N. said it was operating as effectively as possible under Israeli restrictions.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led fighters stormed southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza.
Since then, Israel's offensive against Hamas has killed nearly 60,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials, reduced much of the enclave to ruins and displaced nearly the entire population.
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Kyodo News
16 hours ago
- Kyodo News
A young surgeon tries to save lives at a crippled Gaza hospital
At Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip, nothing is sterilized, so Dr. Jamal Salha and other surgeons wash their instruments in soap. Infections are rampant. The stench of medical waste is overwhelming. And flies are everywhere. Without painkillers, patients moan while lying on metal beds lining the corridors. There's no electricity and no ventilation amid searing heat, leaving anxious visitors to fan bedridden relatives with pieces of cardboard. Shifa, once the largest hospital in Gaza and the cornerstone of its health care system, is a shell of its former self after 22 months of war. The hospital complex the size of seven soccer fields has been devastated by frequent bombings, two Israeli raids and blockades on food, medicine and equipment. Its exhausted staff works around the clock to save lives. 'It is so bad, no one can imagine,' said Salha, a 27-year-old neurosurgeon who, like countless doctors in Gaza, trained at Shifa after medical school and hopes to end his career there. But the future is hard to think about when the present is all-consuming. Salha and other doctors are overwhelmed by a wartime caseload that shows no sign of easing. It has gotten more challenging in recent weeks as patients' bodies wither from rampant malnutrition. Shifa was initially part of a British military post when it opened in 1946. It developed over the years to boast Gaza's largest specialized surgery department, with over 21 operating rooms. Now, there are only three, and they barely function. Because Shifa's operating rooms are always full, surgeries are also performed in the emergency room, and some of the wounded must be turned away. Bombed-out buildings loom over a courtyard filled with patients and surrounded by mounds of rubble. Salha fled northern Gaza at the start of the war — and only returned to Shifa at the beginning of this year. While working at another extremely busy hospital in central Gaza, he kept tabs on Shifa's worsening condition. 'I had seen pictures," he said. "But when I first got back, I didn't want to enter.' A young doctor and a war After graduating from medical school in 2022, Salha spent a year training at Shifa. That is when he and a friend, Bilal, decided to specialize in neurosurgery. But everything changed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel's retaliatory campaign began. For the first few weeks of the war, Salha was an intern at Shifa. Because Israel had cut off Gaza's internet service, one of Salha's jobs was to bring scans to doctors around the complex. He had to navigate through thousands of displaced people sheltering there and run up and down stairwells when elevators stopped working. Once Israeli troops moved into northern Gaza, he and has family left. Bilal, who stayed in Gaza City, was killed a few months later, Salha said. Not long after Salha left, Israeli forces raided Shifa for the first time in November 2023. Israel said the hospital served as a major Hamas command and control center. But it provided little evidence beyond a single tunnel with two small rooms under the facility. It made similar arguments when raiding and striking medical facilities across Gaza even as casualties from the war mounted. Israel says it makes every effort to deliver medical supplies and avoid harming civilians. Under international law, hospitals lose their protected status if they are used for military purposes. Hamas has denied using hospitals for military purposes, though its security personnel can often be seen inside them and they have placed parts of hospitals off limits to the public. Israeli forces returned to Shifa in March 2024, igniting two weeks of fighting in which the military said it killed some 200 militants who had regrouped there. The hospital was left in ruins. The World Health Organization said three hospital buildings were extensively damaged and that its oxygen plant and most equipment were destroyed, including 14 baby incubators. While all this was going on, Salha worked at a hospital in central Gaza, where he performed over 200 surgeries and procedures, including dozens of operations on fractured skulls. Some surgeons spend a lifetime without ever seeing one. When he returned to Shifa as a neurosurgeon resident, the buildings he used to run between — some had been rehabilitated — felt haunted. 'They destroyed all our memories,' he said. A shrunken hospital is stretched to its limits Shifa once had 700 beds. Today there are roughly 200, and nearly as many patients end up on mattresses on the floor, the hospital manager said. Some beds are set up in storage rooms, or in tents. An extra 100 beds, and an additional three surgery rooms, are rented out from a nearby facility. The hospital once employed 1,600 doctors and nurses. Now there about half as many, according to Shifa's administrative manager, Rami Mohana. With Gaza beset by extreme food insecurity, the hospital can no longer feed its staff, and many workers fled to help their families survive. Those who remain are rarely paid. On a recent morning, in a storage room-turned-patient ward, Salha checked up on Mosab al-Dibs, a 14-year-old boy suffering from a severe head injury and malnutrition. 'Look how bad things have gotten?' Salha said, pulling at al-Dibs' frail arm. Al-Dibs' mother, Shahinez, was despondent. 'We've known Shifa since we were kids, whoever goes to it will be cured,' she said. 'Now anyone who goes to it is lost. There's no medicine, no serums. It's a hospital in name only.' There are shortages of basic supplies, like gauze, so patients' bandages are changed infrequently. Gel foams that stop bleeding are rationed. Shifa's three CT scan machines were destroyed during Israeli raids, Mohana said, so patients are sent to another nearby hospital if they need one. Israel has not approved replacing the CT scanners, he said. Patients wait for hours — and sometimes days — as surgeons prioritize their caseload or as they arrange scans. Some patients have died while waiting, Salha said. After months without a pneumatic surgical drill to cut through bones, Shifa finally got one. But the blades were missing, and spare parts were not available, Salha said. ″So instead of 10 minutes, it could take over an hour just to cut the skull bones,' he said. 'It leaves us exhausted and endangers the life of the patient.' When asked by The Associated Press about equipment shortages at Shifa, the Israeli military agency in charge of aid coordination, COGAT, did not address the question. It said the military ''consistently and continuously enables the continued functioning of medical services through aid organizations and the international community.″ Unforgettable moments From his time at the hospital in central Gaza, Salha can't shake the memory of the woman in her 20s who arrived with a curable brain hemorrhage. The hospital wouldn't admit her because there were no beds available in the intensive care unit. He had wanted to take her in an ambulance to another hospital, but because of the danger of coming under Israeli attack, no technician would go with him to operate her ventilator. 'I had to tell her family that we will have to leave her to die," he said. Other stories have happier endings. When a girl bleeding from her head arrived at Shifa, Salha's colleague stopped it with his hand until a gel foam was secured. The girl, who had temporarily lost her vision, greeted Salha after her successful recovery. 'Her vision was better than mine,' the bespectacled Salha said, breaking a smile. 'Sometimes it seems we are living in a stupor. We deal with patients in our sleep and after a while, we wake up and ask: what just happened?'
Japan Today
3 days ago
- Japan Today
At least 40 Gazans killed while seeking aid
By Nidal al-Mughrabi At least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, including 10 seeking aid, health authorities said, adding another five had died of starvation in what humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine. The 10 died in two separate incidents near aid sites belonging to the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in central and southern Gaza, local medics said. The United Nations says more than 1,000 people have been killed trying to receive aid in the enclave since the GHF began operating in May 2025, most of them shot by Israeli forces operating near GHF sites. The GHF said there were no incidents at or near their sites on Monday. Reuters was unable to verify where the incidents took place. Bilal Thari, 40, was among mourners at Gaza City's Al Shifa hospital on Monday who had gathered to collect the bodies of Palestinians killed a day earlier by Israeli fire as they sought aid, Gaza health officials said. "Everyone who goes there, comes back either with a bag of flour or carried back (on a wooden stretcher) as a martyr, or injured. No one comes back safe," Thari said. At least 13 Palestinians were killed on Sunday while waiting for the arrival of U.N. aid trucks at the Zikim crossing on the Israeli border with the northern Gaza Strip, the officials said. At the hospital, some bodies were wrapped in thick patterned blankets because white shrouds, which hold special significance in Islamic burials, were in short supply due to continued Israeli border restrictions and the mounting number of daily deaths, Palestinians said. "We don't want war, we want peace, we want this misery to end. We are out on the streets, we all are hungry, we are all in bad shape, women are out there on the streets, we have nothing available for us to live a normal life like all human beings, there's no life," Thari said. There was no immediate comment by Israel on Sunday's incident. The Israeli military said in a statement to Reuters that it had not fired earlier on Monday in the vicinity of the aid distribution centre in the southern Gaza Strip. It did not elaborate further. Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it is taking steps for more aid to reach its population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, allowing airdrops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he would convene his security cabinet this week to discuss how the military should proceed in Gaza to meet all his government's war goals, which include defeating Hamas and releasing the hostages. DEATHS FROM HUNGER Meanwhile, five more people died of starvation or malnutrition over the last 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry said on Monday. The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from hunger to 180, including 93 children, since the war began. U.N. agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and quickly ease access to it. COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said that during the last week, over 23,000 tons of humanitarian aid in 1,200 trucks had entered Gaza but that hundreds of the trucks had yet to be driven to aid distribution hubs by U.N. and other international organizations. Israel's military later said 120 aid packages containing food had been dropped into Gaza "over the past few hours" by six different countries in collaboration with COGAT. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday that more than 600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions in late July. However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs. Palestinian and U.N. officials said Gaza needs around 600 aid trucks to enter per day to meet the humanitarian requirements - the number Israel used to allow into Gaza before the war. The Gaza war began when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel's offensive has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials who do not distinguish between fighters and non-combatants. According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Japan Times
31-07-2025
- Japan Times
On Gaza malnutrition ward, a child's arm is as wide as mother's thumb
On the pink walls of Nasser hospital's child malnutrition ward, cartoon drawings show children running, smiling, and playing with flowers and balloons. Beneath the pictures, a handful of Gazan mothers watch over their babies who lie still and largely silent, mostly too exhausted by severe hunger to cry. The quiet is common in places treating the most acutely malnourished, doctors said, a sign of bodies shutting down. "She is always lethargic, lying down, like this ... you do not find her responsive," said Zeina Radwan, mother of 10-month-old Maria Suhaib Radwan. She has not been able to find milk or enough food for her baby, and cannot breastfeed as she herself is underfed, surviving on one meal a day. "My children and I cannot live without nutrition." Over the last week, journalists spent five days in Nasser Medical Complex, one of only four centers left in Gaza able to treat the most dangerously hungry children. While they was there, 53 cases of acutely malnourished children were admitted, according to the head of the ward. Gaza's food stocks have been running out since Israel, at war with Palestinian militant group Hamas since October 2023, cut off all supplies to the territory in March. That blockade was lifted in May but with restrictions that Israel says are needed to prevent aid being diverted to militant groups. "She is always lethargic, lying down, like this ... you do not find her responsive," said Zeina Radwan, mother of 10-month-old Maria Suhaib Radwan. | REUTERS In response to a request for comment, COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, said Israel does not restrict aid trucks entering Gaza, but that international organizations face challenges collecting aid inside Gaza. The Israeli military, it said, regularly facilitates the provision of medical services through aid organizations and the international community, with whom it works to meet the needs of Gaza's hospitals. As food stocks ran out, the situation escalated in June and July, with the World Health Organization warning of mass starvation and images of emaciated children shocking the world. The Gaza Health Ministry says 154 people, including 89 children, have died of malnutrition, most in recent weeks. A global hunger monitor said on Tuesday that a famine scenario is unfolding. Israel says it has no aim to starve Gaza. This week it announced steps to allow more aid in, including pausing fighting in some locations, air dropping food and offering more secure routes. The United Nations said the scale of what is needed is vast in order to stave off famine and avert a health crisis. "We need milk for babies. We need medical supplies. We need some food, special food for nutritional department," said Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, head of the pediatric and maternity department in Nasser Medical Complex. "We need everything for the hospitals." Palestinian woman Najla Abu Aya feeds her malnourished 5-month-old daughter, Rama, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip on July 24. | REUTERS Israeli officials say many of those who died while malnourished in Gaza were suffering from preexisting illnesses. Famine experts say this is typical in the early stages of a hunger crisis. "Children with underlying conditions are more vulnerable. They get affected earlier," said Marko Kerac, clinical associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who helped draw up the WHO's treatment guidelines for severe acute malnutrition. Farra said his hospital was now dealing with malnourished children with no previous health problems, like baby Wateen Abu Amounah, born healthy nearly three months ago and now weighing 100 grams less than she weighed at birth. "During the past three months she did not gain one gram. On the contrary the child's weight decreased," the doctor said. "There is total loss of muscles. It's only skin on top of bones, which is an indication that the child has entered a severe malnutrition phase," said Farra. "Even the face of the child: she has lost fat tissues from her cheeks." The baby's mother, Yasmin Abu Sultan, gestures at the child's limbs, her arms about as wide as her mother's thumb. "Can you see? These are her legs. ... Look at her arms," she said. Israa Abu Haleeb and Ahmed Abu Haleeb mourn the death of their malnourished daughter Zainab Abu Haleeb in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on July 26. | REUTERS The youngest babies in particular need special therapeutic formulas made with clean water, and supplies are running low, Farra and the WHO said. "All the key supplies for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition, including medical complications, are really running out," said Marina Adrianopoli, WHO nutrition lead for the Gaza response. "It's really a critical situation." The treatment centers are also operating beyond capacity, she said. In the first two weeks of July, more than 5,000 children under the age of 5 received outpatient treatment for malnutrition, with 18% suffering from the severest form. That was a surge from 6,500 in the whole of June, already the highest of the war and almost certainly an underestimate, said the WHO. Baby Wateen's mother said she tried to get the girl admitted last month, but the center was full. After 10 days with no milk available and barely a meal a day for the rest of the family, she returned last week because her daughter's condition was deteriorating. Like several of the infants at Nasser, Wateen also has a recurring fever and diarrhea, illnesses that malnourished children are more vulnerable to and which make their condition more dangerous. "If she stays like this, I'm going to lose her," her mother said. Wateen remains in hospital getting treatment, where her mother encourages her to take tiny sips from a bottle of formula milk. A side-effect of severe malnutrition is, counterintuitively, loss of appetite, doctors said. Yasmin herself lives on the one meal a day provided by the hospital. Some of the other babies, like 10-month-old Maria, were discharged over the weekend after gaining weight, and given formula milk to take home with them. But others, like 5-month-old Zainab Abu Haleeb, did not make it. Vulnerable to infection because of her severely malnourished state, she died on Saturday of sepsis. Her parents carried her tiny body out of the hospital for burial, wrapped in a white shroud.
