Gaza & Palestine
Intense gunfire by occupation forces in the Qizan al-Najjar area south of Khan Yunis city, south of the Gaza Strip
Ismail Al-Thawabta:
▪ We warn of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe facing the health sector as a result of the occupation's prevention of the entry of medicines and medical supplies, especially treatments for chronic diseases and dialysis consumables. ▪ More than 350,000 patients with chronic diseases face the risk of serious complications or death due to the continued deprivation of their regular medicines and the ongoing blockade on medicine. ▪ Hundreds of kidney failure patients are threatened with direct death as a result of the severe shortage of filters and dialysis supplies and the declining ability of hospitals to provide sufficient sessions. ▪ Around 10,000 cancer patients are suffering harsh conditions and a complete lack of specialty medicines and the suspension of life-saving treatment protocols. ▪ The occupation's deliberate prevention of the entry of life-saving medicines represents a decision of slow and systematic execution against patients and goes beyond military measures to become a primary tool of genocide. ▪ The blockade on medicine constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, which guarantee the protection of patients and the provision of medical care to them. ▪ The blockade on medicine comes as part of a calculated plan to take the remaining health system out of service and make Gaza an unlivable environment. ▪ We call on the international community, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization to intervene immediately and exert real pressure to open the crossings and allow the entry of medical convoys and specialty medicines urgently and sustainably. ▪ We also call for facilitating urgent medical evacuation for critical cases, especially cancer and kidney patients, to receive treatment abroad before it is too late. ▪ We call on international human rights institutions to document the crime of the blockade on medicine and hold the occupation leaders accountable before the International Criminal Court for their ongoing crimes against patients and the health system.
Israeli warships fire toward the coast of Gaza City
Government Media Office in Gaza:
▪ We affirm unequivocally that "Al-Saada Building," which recently collapsed and claimed the lives of more than 21 martyrs and dozens of injured and missing persons, had been directly targeted by the occupation army in the first half of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, specifically on October 9, 2023, at around five o’clock in the evening. ▪ The occupation’s shelling then focused on the building’s foundations and its first and second floors, causing severe and deliberate structural damage to its infrastructure and main bases. ▪ This prior and concentrated shelling is the real and direct cause of the building’s complete collapse, and the occupation army’s claims and denial of targeting the building are nothing but a desperate and exposed attempt to evade legal responsibility for this crime, a systematic misleading policy that the occupation always follows to disclaim the disasters and massacres it commits. ▪ Engineering inspections, documented field reports, and eyewitness accounts have proven the falsehood of the occupation’s narrative and its confusion. ▪ We again hold the occupation fully and directly responsible for this collapse, which falls within the policy of systematic destruction of infrastructure and civilian objects in clear and explicit violation of international humanitarian law and all international conventions and norms. ▪ In the same context, we warn of the risk of collapse of dozens of other cracked residential buildings, which have now become an imminent danger threatening the lives of citizens and displaced persons as a result of being shelled and their foundations sabotaged by the occupation during the periods of the ongoing war. ▪ We call on the international community, international, UN, and human rights institutions to document this ongoing crime and similar crimes, and to work seriously to prosecute the occupation leaders in international courts and assume their responsibilities toward protecting civilians and civilian objects in the Gaza Strip.