Latest news with #UN-run
Boston Globe
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
New aid site in Gaza brings more scenes of chaos
Advertisement A day earlier, a large crowd of desperate Palestinians broke into a warehouse run by the UN's World Food Program in Gaza in search of food and flour. Program officials said initial reports indicated that two people had been killed. Israel bombed Gaza again Thursday, and Gaza's Health Ministry said hospitals had received more than 60 bodies over the past 24 hours. Amid the military operation, the White House sent an Israeli-backed cease-fire proposal to Hamas that would allow the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip amid growing international pressure to end the fighting and devastation in the territory, according to US and Israeli officials. President Trump and his envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, submitted the framework to Hamas after Israel signed off on the proposal, according to Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. An Israeli official familiar with the details said the initial phase of the deal would include a 60-day cease-fire and a flow of aid through UN-run operations. Hamas officials stopped short of rejecting the latest proposal but suggested it did not contain strong-enough guarantees on ending the war. Advertisement On Tuesday, at the chaotic launch of the new aid initiative, thousands of hungry Palestinians rushed another food distribution site, prompting Israeli forces outside the compound to fire warning shots to disperse the crowds. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said Thursday that 'nonlethal means' had been used to disperse crowds that were refusing to leave the new aid hub, but that no one was injured. The foundation did not say who had opened fire. The Israeli military denied firing near the hub Thursday. The foundation is run by private American companies, with Israeli forces guarding the compounds' perimeter. The new aid operation is intended to bypass Hamas, which Israel accuses of siphoning off aid, selling it for profit, and using it as a tool to control Palestinians. The UN says the new system is woefully insufficient to meet the basic needs for Palestinians' survival after an 80-day Israeli blockade brought much of the territory to the brink of famine. Hundreds of distribution points existed under the previous UN aid-distribution system. But the new system had only three locations operating by Thursday, up from two Wednesday. Separately from the new system, some UN aid trucks are making their way through a single border crossing into southern Gaza. But UN officials say that distribution to warehouses and bakeries inside Gaza has been hampered by the lack of secure routes, and that negligible quantities of food are reaching the people who need it. Advertisement The United Nations said Israeli authorities had cleared about 800 truckloads of aid since the blockade was lifted last week. Only about 200 of them have moved out to the population, however, because of the dangers surrounding aid distribution. 'That's better than absolutely nothing,' said Olga Cherevko, a member of the UN humanitarian team for Gaza. 'But it is less than a drop in the ocean.' The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said Thursday that it had distributed enough supplies throughout the day for nearly 1 million meals and that, in total to date, it had distributed about 17,200 boxes of provisions, enough for more than 1.8 million meals. The group said it planned to build additional sites in the coming weeks, including in northern Gaza. Against the backdrop of the humanitarian crisis and growing international pressure to end the war in Gaza, Israel said it had accepted the new version of a cease-fire proposal from Witkoff. Hamas has said it would accept some of its terms, including the release of 10 living hostages held by Hamas and the remains of others who died in captivity, in exchange for a number of Palestinians in Israeli custody. But it was unclear whether the new proposal would resolve the main sticking point between the sides. Israel is insisting on having the option to resume fighting if Hamas does not surrender and disarm. Hamas is demanding firm guarantees that a temporary cease-fire would lead to a permanent cessation of hostilities and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Advertisement Israel ended a previous cease-fire in March and has since embarked on a new phase of fighting, advancing slowly and expanding its control over larger sections of the territory. Khalil Degran, a spokesperson for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, said his facility had received 20 bodies Thursday morning after a reported Israeli airstrike in Al-Bureij, a few miles to the north. The victims included nine children, Degran said. 'The situation is catastrophic and dire,' he said. 'We simply don't have the capacity to provide adequate medical care.' The Israeli military said it had struck a Hamas cell in the area of Al-Bureij and was reviewing the attack after reports that uninvolved civilians had been killed. This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Silhouetted by fire, 6-year-old girl survives Israeli attack in Gaza
Ward Khalil stares at the camera, her eyes barely focusing as she recalls the horrors of what she experienced. 'When I woke up, I found a huge fire, and I saw my mom was dead,' she says, recounting the Israeli air attack early on Monday that she survived but that killed her mother, two of her siblings and 33 other people. Video footage of six-year-old Ward, her small body silhouetted against the flames after the attack on the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City, has shocked people around the world, highlighting the ferocity of Israel's attacks on Gaza. Ward's father and a brother also survived the attack, but they both remain in hospital. The school had been sheltering several families, including many children, when it was targeted by Israeli fire. 'I walked in the fire so I could escape. … I was in the fire, and the ceiling fell on me. The ceiling all collapsed. The fire was blazing,' Ward recounted, the distress clear in her voice. 'See? My arm is burned here,' she said, showing the camera the injuries. Ward sobbed as she explained what happened to her family: 'They were martyred. May God forgive them.' Footage taken from the school after the attack shows blood-stained walls and charred mattresses lying on the floor as rescue workers and distraught relatives search the rubble and burned clothing for signs of survivors. Eyad al-Sheikh Khalil, Ward's uncle, rushed to the school after seeing a picture of her online. 'I was looking at the pictures journalists were posting, and I saw a photo of Ward with the Civil Defence and realised it was my niece,' he said of the images of Ward being comforted by rescue workers near the school, the bright bows in her hair dulled by the ash from the fire. 'When someone comes out of an attack like this, in a war like this, what do you expect a kid to feel?' Eyad asked. 'Of course she's going to suffer mentally. We're all suffering mentally.' 'It was indescribable,' a survivor who was pulled from the rubble with her son told rescuers. 'Body parts, charred bodies, the smell of burning. I swear to God, our hearts have died. We're shaken, exhausted. Enough.'Displaced people in Gaza have been crowding into schools, many of which are affiliated with the United Nations, since the onset of Israel's war on the enclave in October 2023. On May 7, Israeli forces targeted a single school sheltering 2,000 Palestinians twice on the same day, killing at least 29 civilians in the Bureij refugee camp, including women and children. According to UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, nearly three-quarters of all school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit by Israeli fire since October 2023. According to UN satellite-based assessments, 95 per cent of Gaza's schools have sustained damage, rendering the vast majority unusable. UN-run shelters are now 'overwhelmed with displaced people desperately seeking safety', UNRWA said in an update after the attack on the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School. It also stressed that the lack of food in Gaza due to a three-month siege imposed upon the territory by Israel had added to people's suffering. 'Many families are sheltering in abandoned, unfinished, or damaged buildings,' the agency explained. 'Sanitation conditions are dire; in some cases, hundreds of people are having to share a single toilet. Others, including children and pregnant women, are sleeping in the open.'
Middle East Eye
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Israeli military conducts armed raids of Unrwa schools in Jerusalem
The Israeli military conducted an armed raid on three UN-operated schools in East Jerusalem in the West Bank before forcing more than 550 children out of their classrooms and detaining one United Nations relief and works agency for Palestine refugees staff member on Thursday. The raid led to an outcry from the commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, and caused Unrwa to close down three other schools in the area out of fear for their students' safety. Lazzarini described the Israeli authorities' closure of several UN-run schools in the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem as 'an assault on children. An assault on education'. Writing on X, he said it was 'a sad day in occupied East Jerusalem… Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law. These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations. 'Now, nearly 800 girls and boys - some as young as 6 years old- are left in shock and trauma,' he added. Earlier this morning, heavily armed Israeli forces entered three UN-run schools in Shu'fat Camp in occupied East Jerusalem, where children aged between the ages of six and 15 attend. The government decided to prohibit anyone from entering the school building after 8 May, including principals, teachers, staff, and parents. The BBC reported a closure order on the wall of the school read: "It will be prohibited to operate educational institutions, or employ teachers, teaching staff or any other staff, and it will be forbidden to accommodate students or allow the entry of students into this institution." In October 2024, the Israeli Knesset passed a law banning the activities of the Unrwa in Israel. Lazzarini added, 'By enforcing closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities are denying Palestinian children their basic right to learn. UNRWA schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children.'
Euronews
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Israel shuts down six UN schools for Palestinians in east Jerusalem
Palestinian students at six UN-run schools in east Jerusalem were forced to leave early on Thursday after Israeli forces permanently shut them down. Israel's Education Ministry ordered the schools' closure last month, giving them 30 days to shut down, which ended on Wednesday. The schools are operated by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which Israel banned from operating on its soil earlier this year. The organisation continues to run schools in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The UNRWA ban was the culmination of a long campaign against the agency, which intensified after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza. Israel claims UNRWA is infiltrated by the Palestinian militant group, and that the organisation teaches antisemitic content and anti-Israel sentiment. UNRWA denies the allegations. UNRWA is the main provider of education and health care to Palestinian refugees across east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and considers the entire city its unified capital, but the claim is not recognised by most of the international community. The Israeli Ministry of Education says it will place the students into other Jerusalem schools, but parents, teachers and administrators warn that closing the main schools in east Jerusalem will force their children to cross crowded and dangerous checkpoints every day. Some do not have the correct permits to pass through. Some 800 Palestinian students are at risk of missing out on their education altogether if they cannot be placed in different schools. The Ministry of Education said it was closing the schools because they were operating without a license. UNRWA administrators pledged to keep the schools open for as long as possible.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Israeli strikes on Gaza restaurant and market kill 33, health ministry says
At least 33 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in two Israeli strikes on a crowded restaurant and market on the same street in Gaza City, medics and the Hamas-run health ministry say. Graphic videos posted on social media showed bodies slumped at tables the Thailandy restaurant, in the northern Rimal neighbourhood, which was also operating as a community kitchen. Footage from the nearby marketplace showed a small child with a rucksack lying dead in the street. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports. Earlier, hospitals said at least 59 people had been killed in attacks since Tuesday night, most of them at two schools serving as shelters for displaced families. The strikes come as Israel says it is preparing to intensify and expand its military campaign against Hamas after 19 months of war. The two strikes on al-Wahda street in Rimal - one of Gaza's busiest commercial hubs - happened almost simultaneously on Wednesday afternoon, about 100m (330ft) apart. Footage from the scene shortly afterwards showed wounded people being transported on chairs and in the backs of cars. A woman carrying a baby in her arms and accompanied by two other children told Reuters news agency that they were inside the Thailandy restaurant when it was struck. "Everyone died," she said. "The blood was like a lake, oh my baby, pools of blood." Photos shared by local activists, which could not immediately be verified, showed a number of bodies. They appeared to include a boy selling coffee, two parents and their young son, and a market vendor sitting by his small stall. Palestinian journalist Yahya Sobeih was also killed, colleagues said, only hours after his wife gave birth to their first child. In another video, the owner of the nearby Palmyra restaurant, Abu Saleh Abdu, said many children, elderly people and passersby were killed. Addressing the Israeli military, he asked: "What do [you] want to achieve? You haven't bombed any fighters or any weapons. You've only hit civilians." The Thailandy restaurant was destroyed during last year's Israeli ground operation at the nearby al-Shifa hospital, but it had been rebuilt recently using tents and makeshift structures. In addition to selling basic meals, the restaurant was also preparing hundreds of hot meals daily for humanitarian organisations to distribute to poor and displaced people. Gaza's Hamas-run Government Media Office accused the Israeli military of committing war crimes by "deliberately targeting gatherings of civilians and displaced people" in four separate incidents over 24 hours. Hamas accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting gatherings of civilians [AFP] Women and children were among 33 people who were killed when the UN-run Abu Humeisa school in Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, was bombed twice on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency. Witness Ali al-Shaqra said on Wednesday that 300 families had been staying at the school and that the effect of the strike was like an "earthquake". The Israeli military said it struck "terrorists who were operating within a Hamas command-and-control centre". The military has not yet commented on a strike on the al-Karama school in the eastern Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City on Wednesday morning, which the Civil Defence said killed another 15 people. It comes amid international condemnation of Israel's plans to expand and intensify its ground offensive against Hamas. Israeli officials have said they include seizing all of the territory indefinitely, forcibly displacing Palestinians to the south, and taking over aid distribution with private companies despite protests from the UN and its humanitarian partners. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that his security cabinet had decided on a "forceful operation" to destroy Hamas and rescue its remaining hostages. He said Gaza's 2.1 million population "will be moved, to protect it", and that troops "will not enter and come out". Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza on 2 March and resumed its offensive two weeks later after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire, saying it was putting pressure on Hamas to release its 59 remaining hostages. The renewed Israeli strikes and ground operations have already resulted in hundreds of casualties and the displacement of an estimated 423,000 people, with about 70% of Gaza placed under Israeli evacuation orders, within an Israel-designated "no-go" zone, or both, according to the UN. Aid agencies have also warned that mass starvation is imminent unless the blockade ends. The UN has said Israel is obliged under international law to ensure food and medical supplies for Gaza's population. Israel has said it is complying with international law and that there is no aid shortage because thousands of lorry loads entered Gaza during the ceasefire. Palestinians said a school-turned-shelter elsewhere in Gaza City was hit by an Israeli strike on Wednesday morning [Reuters] Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, who is based in the occupied West Bank, told the BBC that the situation in Gaza was "a real catastrophe". "This cannot continue. It's a siege, famine. No water, no electricity, no hope," he said. Mustafa urged the international community to step up efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas as quickly as possible, warning: "People are dying every day in Gaza, and this should not happen anymore." An Israeli official said on Monday that the expanded offensive would not begin until after US President Donald Trump's visit to the region next week, providing what he called "a window of opportunity" to Hamas to agree a deal. However, a senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said on Tuesday that there was "no point" to negotiations while Israel continued what he called a "starvation war". The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. At least 52,653 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 2,545 since the Israeli offensive resumed, according to the territory's health ministry.
