The alert was given on Saturday October 21 by five UN agencies. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is now “catastrophic”. Hospitals are “overwhelmed” with injured people and children are “dying at an alarming rate”. In a statement, the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Development Program and the United Nations Population Fund recall that the situation humanitarian aid in Gaza was already “desperate” before the conflict triggered by the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel.
“Today it is catastrophic,” they continue, calling on the international community to “do more” to help the inhabitants of Gaza. “Time is running out before mortality rates skyrocket due to the outbreak of disease and lack of health care capacity,” they warn.
“We will increase strikes,” says IDF spokesperson
At least 55 people were killed in the Gaza Strip overnight from Saturday to Sunday after the announcement of the intensification of Israeli bombardments, the Hamas government announced. In its latest report on Saturday, Hamas reported nearly 4,400 deaths, mostly civilians, in Israeli strikes triggered by the bloody attack it launched on October 7 against Israel and which left 1,400 dead. , most of them on the first day of the operation, and mostly civilians.
Israel announced the intensification of its strikes on the Gaza Strip in preparation for a ground offensive on the Palestinian enclave. “As of today, we are going to increase strikes” on the Gaza Strip, General Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army, warned on Saturday. The goal, according to him, is to “reduce the risks for our forces in the next stages” of the conflict. Since the Hamas attack on its territory, Israel has vowed to annihilate the Islamist movement, in power in the Gaza Strip since June 2007.
“We are going to enter Gaza, we are going to do it for an operational purpose, to destroy the infrastructure and the Hamas terrorists, and we are going to do it in a professional manner,” the head of state said on Saturday during a troop review. -Israeli major, General Herzi Halevi.
The United States is strengthening its military assets in the region
The United States has indicated that it is strengthening its military assets in the region due to “recent escalations by Iran and its affiliated forces”. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the deployment of several anti-missile defense systems “across the region”, without specifying where exactly, and the placement in a state of “pre-deployment” of additional military assets, without specifying their number . “These measures will strengthen regional deterrence efforts, increase the protection of U.S. forces in the region and contribute to the defense of Israel,” he said.
Israel says it killed ‘terrorists’ in airstrike on Jenin mosque
The Israeli army claimed this Sunday, October 22, to have killed, during an airstrike, “terrorists” sheltering in an underground passage of the Al-Ansar mosque in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank. “The army carried out an aerial attack on a terrorist compound belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives, who were responsible for several terrorist attacks in recent months, and who were planning another imminent terrorist attack,” the army said Israeli in a press release.
The director of the Jenin Red Crescent, Mahmoud Al-Saadi, was quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa as saying one person was killed and three others were injured in the strike.
According to the Israeli army, which carried out the operation jointly with the Israeli domestic intelligence service, the mosque served as a “command center for planning future attacks” and a “base for carrying them out”. Still according to the army, the “terrorist cell” organized an attack on October 14 near the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank using an explosive device but without causing any casualties. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men were killed in the Jenin attack.
Hezbollah “drags Lebanon into war”, says Israeli army
The Israeli army accused Lebanese Hezbollah this Sunday of seeking military escalation in the border area at the risk of dragging Lebanon into a war, after new exchanges of fire between Israel and the Shiite group.
“Hezbollah is attacking and dragging Lebanon into a war from which it will not benefit, but in which it risks losing a lot,” warned the spokesperson for the Israeli army, Jonathan Conricus, during an intervention on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Tensions rose a notch on Saturday after clashes in which four Hezbollah fighters were killed, according to the Lebanese Islamist movement, supported by Iran. Islamic Jihad announced the death of one of its fighters. On the Israeli side, the army announced that three of its soldiers had been injured, one seriously. Two Thai farm workers were also injured.
Calls for ceasefire in Gaza at ‘Peace Summit’
Calls for a truce between Israel and Palestinian Hamas to allow aid into Gaza came at Saturday’s “Peace Summit” in Egypt, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for action quickly to put an end to “the nightmare”. Beyond the shared calls for the entry of aid to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, subject to an Israeli siege, the representatives of Western and Arab countries could not agree on a final communiqué, indicated Arab diplomats to the AFP.
The negotiations failed on two points, according to them: on the one hand, “Western countries wanted a clear condemnation of Hamas”, whose attack on October 7 against Israel triggered a war that left 1,400 dead in this country. On the other, they demanded “a call for the release of the hostages”, some 200 people kidnapped during the attack by Hamas. The Arab countries refused to include these points and the summit ended with a press release from the Egyptian presidency denouncing “an international scene which has revealed in recent decades its incapacity to find a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian question”.