Middle East crisis live: 20 killed as aid truck overturns in Gaza, civil defence agency says | Israel-Gaza war

Rachel Hall

Targeting medics and hospitals in acts of war should be called “healthocide”, academics have urged, amid an increase in such attacks in recent years.

Health services are increasingly deliberately under attack and medics are facing violence and abuse in conflict zones around the world – in particular in Gaza, but also in Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and El Salvador.

This is despite the longstanding principle under international humanitarian law of medical neutrality, which protects healthcare workers and facilities during armed conflict and civil unrest, enabling them to provide medical care to those in need.

In a commentary published in the British Medical Journal, Dr Joelle Abi-Rached and colleagues of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon wrote:

Both in Gaza and Lebanon, healthcare facilities have not only been directly targeted, but access to care has also been obstructed, including incidents where ambulances have been prevented from reaching the injured, or deliberately attacked.

What is becoming clear is that healthcare workers and facilities are no longer afforded the protection guaranteed by international humanitarian law.

The authors cite data from Israel’s full-scale invasion of Gaza, which has resulted in at least 986 medical workers’ deaths. Recent figures from the Healthcare Workers Watch show that 28 doctors from Gaza are being held inside Israeli prisons without any charge, eight them senior consultants in surgery, orthopaedics, intensive care, cardiology and paediatrics.

The World Health Organization’s representative for the West Bank and Gaza stated at the UN security council in January that hospitals in Gaza had “turned into battlegrounds”, while the healthcare system was being “systematically dismantled and driven to the brink of collapse”.

Jordan said Israeli settlers attacked a Gaza-bound aid convoy on Wednesday in the second such incident in days, accusing Israel of failing to act firmly to prevent repeated assaults.

The convoy, carrying 30 trucks of humanitarian aid, was delayed in its arrival in a violation of signed agreements, the government spokesperson Mohammad al-Momani told Reuters.

“This requires a serious Israeli intervention and no leniency in dealing with those who obstruct these convoys,” Momani said.

Lorenzo Tondo

The Guardian was granted permission on Tuesday to travel onboard a Jordanian military aircraft providing aid. Israel announced last week that it had resumed coordinated humanitarian airdrops over Gaza, following mounting international pressure over severe shortages of food and medical supplies, which has reached such a crisis point that a famine is now unfolding there.

The flight offered not only a chance to witness three tonnes of aid – far from sufficient – dropped over the famine-stricken strip but also a rare opportunity to observe, albeit from above, a territory that has been largely sealed off from the international media since 7 October and the subsequent offensive launched by Israel. Following the Hamas-led attacks that day, Israel barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza – an unprecedented move in the history of modern conflict, marking one of the rare moments that reporters have been denied access to an active war zone.

Even from an altitude of about 2,000ft (600 metres), it was possible to glimpse places that mark some of the conflict’s most devastating chapters – a landscape etched with the scars of its deadliest attacks.

These are the sites of bombings and sieges that have been courageously documented by Palestinian journalists – often at the cost of their own lives. More than 230 Palestinian reporters lie buried beneath in hastily dug cemeteries.

You can read the full story by Lorenzo Tondo with photography by Alessio Mamo here:

Trump declines to say whether he supports or opposes potential Israeli military takeover of Gaza, as UN alarmed by expansion reports

Peter Beaumont

On Tuesday, the US president, Donald Trump, declined to say whether he supported or opposed a potential military takeover of Gaza by Israel and said his administration’s focus was on increasing food access to the Palestinian territory.

Trump told reporters:

I know that we are there now trying to get people fed. As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.

Late on Tuesday, a senior UN official warned that expanding Israeli military operations inside the territory “would risk catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians and could further endanger the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza”.

Addressing the UN security council in New York, Miroslav Jenča, the assistant secretary general for Europe, central Asia and the Americas, said:

There is no military solution to the conflict in Gaza or the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

China’s deputy UN representative, Geng Shuang, expressed “great concern” about the reported plans for Gaza and added:

We urge Israel to immediately halt such dangerous actions.

He called for a ceasefire and urged countries with influence to take concrete steps to help bring one about.

Israeli cabinet meeting postponed as tensions rise over Netanyahu’s occupation plan

Peter Beaumont

An Israeli security cabinet meeting, which had been expected to discuss Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for the “full occupation” of Gaza, has been postponed amid mounting tensions over whether the plan is feasible.

Amid a stalling of ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, Israeli officials had briefed local and international media that the prime minister was considering an expansive offensive, aimed at taking full control of the Palestinian territory after 22 months of war against the militant group Hamas.

However, senior Israeli military officers and former senior commanders warned the plan would endanger the lives of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas, risk further international isolation of Israel and require Israeli soldiers to administer a population in which Hamas fighters were still present.

Any move towards full occupation is likely to be strongly resisted by large parts of the international community, already horrified by the conduct of Israel’s military campaign.

Israel’s scorched-earth campaign has obliterated large parts of Gaza, killed more than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, forced nearly all of Gaza’s more than 2 million people from their homes and created what a global hunger monitor last week called an unfolding famine.

That has caused widespread international anger and prompted several European countries to say they would recognise a Palestinian state next month if there was no ceasefire, amid mounting calls for sanctions against Israel.

The disquiet follows briefings to Israeli journalists on Monday saying that Netanyahu had decided the expanded offensive was a foregone conclusion.

“The die has been cast. We’re going for the full conquest of the Gaza Strip – and defeating Hamas,” the unnamed sources said, quoting Netanyahu.

By Tuesday, however, evidence had emerged of deep splits between Netanyahu and senior military officials, including the chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, who reportedly voiced opposition to the plan, prompting calls for his dismissal.

Absent at a security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu did, however, meet security officials, but not in a decision-making setting. His office said later that the Israeli military would carry out any decision made in cabinet.

During a visit to an army training facility earlier on Tuesday, Netanyahu said:

It is necessary to complete the defeat of the enemy in Gaza, to free all our hostages and to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday that 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

“Twenty people were killed and dozens injured around midnight last night in a truck carrying aid [that] overturned … while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid,” the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Hamas accused Israel of forcing truck drivers to take unsafe routes to reach aid distribution centres. “This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks,” its media office said in a statement.

Seperately, it was reported yesterday that truck drivers trying to deliver aid inside Gaza said their work had become increasingly dangerous in recent months as people have grown desperately hungry and violent gangs have filled a power vacuum left by the territory’s Hamas rulers.

Crowds of hungry people have routinely ripped aid off the backs of moving trucks, the local drivers said. According to reports, some trucks have been hijacked by armed men working for gangs who sell the aid in Gaza’s markets for exorbitant prices.

In other developments:

• An Israeli security cabinet meeting, which had been expected to discuss Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for the “full occupation” of Gaza, has been postponed amid mounting tensions over whether the plan is feasible. Amid a stalling of ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, Israeli officials had briefed local and international media that the prime minister was considering an expansive offensive, aimed at taking full control of the Palestinian territory after 22 months of war against the militant group Hamas.

• On Tuesday, the United Nations called reports about a possible decision to expand Israel’s military operations throughout the Gaza Strip “deeply alarming” if true. The UN assistant secretary general Miroslav Jenča told a UN security council meeting on the situation in Gaza that such a move “would risk catastrophic consequences … and could further endanger the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza”.

• The US president, Donald Trump, declined to say whether he supported or opposed a potential military takeover of Gaza by Israel and said his administration’s focus was on increasing food access to the Palestinian territory under assault from Washington’s ally. “I know that we are there now trying to get people fed,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.” Trump said Israel and Arab states were going to help with food and aid distribution in Gaza and provide financial assistance. He did not elaborate.

• The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah warned on Tuesday that if Israel intensified its military operations against his group, the Iran-backed armed faction would resume firing missiles toward Israel. Naim Qassem’s comments came as Lebanon’s cabinet was meeting to discuss Hezbollah’s disarmament.

• Gaza’s civil defence agency said 26 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Tuesday, including 14 who were waiting near an aid distribution site. Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that eight people were killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting for aid near the southern city of Khan Younis.