hundreds of people evacuate al-Chifa hospital – L’Express

⇒ The French Minister of the Armed Forces is again in Qatar to discuss the situation of hostages held in Gaza

⇒ 17,000 liters of fuel entered Gaza this Friday

⇒ Five Palestinian fighters killed in West Bank airstrike

On the fourth consecutive day of the raid on the al-Chifa hospital in Gaza, the Israeli army ordered its evacuation via loudspeaker “within an hour”, an Agency journalist reported this Saturday, November 18 early in the morning. France-Presse present on site. Hundreds of people have left the hospital, assures this same journalist, while the Hamas Ministry of Health specifies that “120 injured” and premature babies could not be evacuated.

For its part, the Israeli army affirmed in a press release that it had “at no time ordered the evacuation of patients or medical teams”, and assured that it had “even proposed that any request for medical evacuation be facilitated by the Israeli Defense Forces. The IDF also claims to have “granted the request of the director of al-Chifa hospital to allow Gazans who were in the hospital and who wished to be evacuated to do so by a secure route.”

According to the UN, 2,300 patients, caregivers and displaced people are in this hospital. And international concern is growing for their fate. The Israeli army, for its part, assures that Hamas in power in Gaza uses this establishment as a military base, and claims to search the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip “building by building”.

The French Minister of the Armed Forces is going to Qatar again this Saturday, for a second visit in just 48 hours to the small Gulf state which is mediating for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Sébastien Lecornu, who was in Israel this Friday, is to have discussions with the Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed ben Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, his office told AFP.

This new visit was not planned in the minister’s tour program in the region. He successively visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, then Israel on Friday. Each time he mentioned the situation of the hostages, while France has 8 missing, and met families of hostages in Israel. Thursday, from Qatar, Sébastien Lecornu declared that he had “hope” for their fate.

Doha, which hosts a Hamas political office and has provided millions of dollars in financial aid to Gaza, was particularly involved in the mediation which allowed the release of four hostages in October: an American woman and her daughter, as well as two Israelis.

At the request of the United States, Israel authorized the daily entry of two tanker trucks into the Gaza Strip on Friday. A first delivery of 17,000 liters of fuel arrived in the evening at the Rafah terminal in order to restart the electricity generators of hospitals and telecommunications networks, according to the authority of the Palestinian part of the terminal. Israel has so far refused to let the fuel pass, saying it could benefit the military activities of Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007.

The announced deliveries represent only a small part of the quantities of fuel, or 50 trucks, which entered the Gaza Strip daily before the start of the war, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). This agency announced on Friday that it would soon no longer be able to coordinate the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza due to the communications cut.

Five Palestinian fighters from Fatah, the movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, were killed early Saturday in a very rare airstrike on Nablus, the large city in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent and sources within Fatah. The Israeli army, for its part, announced that it had “eliminated a certain number of terrorists in Balata”, the Nablus refugee camp, which shelters 24,000 people according to the UN which manages it.

Balata is known for hosting young fighters who are members of the armed branches of the various Palestinian movements, led by Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat and which currently leads the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel for 56 years. There are also fighters from Islamic Jihad and Hamas, in power in Gaza, at war since October 7 against the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

Five signatory states to the treaty creating the International Criminal Court (ICC) have requested an investigation into the “situation in the State of Palestine”, announced its prosecutor Karim Khan, who confirmed that he was investigating the crimes committed since the bloody attack on Hamas of October 7. “My Office received a referral on the situation in the State of Palestine from the following five States Parties: South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia […] Comoros and Djibouti,” Karim Khan said. “In receiving the referral, my Office confirms that it is currently investigating the situation,” he added in a statement.

The ICC, created in 2002 to try the world’s worst atrocities, opened an investigation in 2021 into alleged war crimes in the Palestinian Territories, including alleged crimes committed by Israeli forces, Hamas and other groups. armed Palestinians. Karim Khan said his mandate would apply to alleged crimes committed during the current war. However, its teams were unable to enter either Gaza or Israel, which is not a member of the ICC. Legal experts told AFP that both sides could be accused of war crimes.