resumption of evacuations from Gaza to Egypt – L’Express

According to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), 20 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are “out of service”. A situation which pushed the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to warn that “if we do not act now, if we do not immediately stop this bloodbath with a ceasefire or at least a medical evacuation patients, these hospitals will indeed become a morgue”.

The situation is particularly tense at al-Chifa hospital, the main healthcare facility in the Gaza Strip. The Deputy Minister of Health of the Hamas government in Gaza told AFP this Sunday morning that an Israeli airstrike had “completely destroyed” the heart disease department building of this hospital. Information confirmed to AFP by a witness present in the health establishment, but denied by the Israeli army, accusing “terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip” of having hit it with a “poorly fired rocket”.

“Violent fighting” also took place all night around this hospital, witnesses taking refuge in the establishment located in western Gaza City told AFP by telephone. In a statement released overnight, the director of al-Chifa hospital, Mohammed Abou Salmiya, confirmed that it was “totally surrounded” by Israeli forces and that bombings “continue in its surroundings”. “The medical team cannot work and the bodies, by the dozens, cannot be transported or buried,” he added.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was also alarmed early this Sunday of having “lost contact” with his interlocutors within the hospital, according to him the object of “repeated attacks”. On Saturday, MSF announced that two premature babies had died in this hospital after treatment was stopped due to lack of electricity. 17 are still in intensive care, according to the NGO. The Israeli army indicated that it would help evacuate these premature babies in danger “to a safer hospital”.

Several dozen foreigners and dual nationals, as well as wounded Palestinians, were evacuated this Sunday from the Gaza Strip bombed by Israel to Egypt, we learned from both sides of the border. “Fifty dual nationals arrived in Rafah” on the Egyptian side as well as “seven wounded Palestinians,” reported the Alqahera News channel, close to the Egyptian intelligence services.

For its part, the Authority in charge of borders within the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip had called on Saturday evening “all holders of foreign passports and people registered on the evacuation lists” to present themselves at the terminal, located at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip and which leads to Egyptian Sinai.

Since November 1, dozens of wounded Palestinians have been evacuated to Egyptian hospitals. And hundreds of dual nationals and foreigners, notably Americans, French, Russians and Germans, have also crossed Rafah. However, the terminal was not able to open every day, often due to disagreements over the wounded to be evacuated. Among those leaving Gaza on Sunday via Rafah were holders of Polish, Romanian and Russian passports.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced “a significant number of deaths and injuries” in the “bombing” late Saturday of its headquarters in Gaza City, evacuated by its employees and now occupied by hundreds of displaced Palestinians.

“The ongoing tragedy of civilian deaths and injuries trapped in this conflict […] must stop, UNDP said in a statement. Civilians, civilian infrastructure and the inviolability of UN premises must be respected and protected at all times.”

AFP images also show a crater in the middle of the courtyard of a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of displaced people have settled there.

Israeli fighter jets struck “terrorist infrastructure” in Syria after firing from this territory towards the part of the Golan, annexed by Israel, the IDF announced this Sunday. “A short time ago, in response to the attack on the Golan Heights yesterday [samedi]”, fighter planes struck terrorist infrastructures in Syria,” the army said in a short statement. Israel had already struck Syria on Friday, after the fall of a drone on a school in Eilat (southern Israel ) coming from Syria, according to her.

This Sunday afternoon, a major civic march against anti-Semitism is planned in the streets of Paris. Organized at the call of the presidents of the National Assembly and the Senate, Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher, it is intended to be a response to the explosion in the number of acts hostile to Jews since the Hamas massacres in Israel on 7 October and the military response that followed.

Leaving from the Esplanade des Invalides from 3 p.m., the Parisian procession will link the Bourbon Palace then the Luxembourg Palace. Rallies are also planned in several other cities in the country, notably at the call of the Association of Mayors of France.

Saturday evening, three people were slightly injured in Vieux Lyon when ultra-right activists tried to force their way into a conference on Palestine, according to the prefecture and witnesses. Dozens of people dressed in black and with partially masked faces targeted a premises in the early evening where a conference organized by the Palestine 69 Collective was being held, several witnesses described to an AFP journalist. One of the attackers was arrested, according to the prefecture, which “strongly condemned” this violence.