Middle East crisis live: UN says aid work in Gaza disrupted after Israel orders evacuation of Deir al-Balah area

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The UN says 15 premises hosting aid workers and four warehouses were affected, as the Israeli military says it is targeting ‘terror operatives’ in the areaSee all our Israel-Gaza coverageThe near-term risk of a broader war in the Middle East has eased somewhat after Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah exchanged fire without further escalation but Iran still poses a significant danger as it weighs a strike on Israel, America’s top general said.Air force Gen CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to Reuters after emerging from a three-day trip to the Middle East that saw him fly into Israel just hours after Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel, and Israel’s military struck Lebanon to thwart a larger attack.The new evacuation orders forced many families and patients to leave al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people had taken shelter, for fear of Israeli bombardments. Gaza’s health ministry called for the 100 patients inside the hospital, and the medical teams who remained to care for them, to be protected.The UN’s World Food Programme warned that the food distribution centres and community kitchens it supports in Gaza are increasingly being disrupted by Israeli evacuation orders.Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on the occupied West Bank on Monday in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city of Tulkarm, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement. The Israeli military said its aircraft struck a militant operations centre in the camp, and that troops were separately blocking routes and conducting searches in the West Bank after reports of an abduction.Israeli settlers shot dead one Palestinian and wounded three others in the occupied West Bank’s Bethlehem. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports on the settler raid, it added.Some Israeli officials and media reacted with satisfaction on Monday after a long-expected missile attack by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement appeared to have been largely thwarted by pre-emptive Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon. Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said Hezbollah had suffered a “crushing blow” from the Israeli strikes but that a longer lasting solution was still needed.Benjamin Netanyahu faced a political backlash in Israel for the limited nature of Sunday’s airstrikes against Hezbollah, amid calls for a broader offensive in Lebanon. Some of the fiercest criticism came from the far-right wing of the prime minister’s own fractious coalition, which is also increasingly divided over the status of Jerusalem’s holiest site.The United States continues to assess that the threat of attack against Israel by Iran and its proxy groups still exists, the Pentagon said on Monday, after Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel in retaliation for the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander. “I would point you to some of the public comments that have been made by Iranian leaders and others … we continue to assess that there is a threat of attack,” Pentagon spokesperson air force Maj Gen Patrick Ryder told reporters.The brother of the Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, has called for those responsible for his sister’s death to be prosecuted and punished. Frankcom, a 43-year-old from Melbourne who was working in Gaza with World Central Kitchen, was one of seven people killed in April when a convoy of cars was hit by an Israeli airstrike. Israel’s defence force conducted an investigation into the incident, which resulted in two officers being dismissed and three others being reprimanded. Mal Frankcom told the ABC he did not feel this was an adequate response. Continue reading…

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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/aug/27/middle-east-crisis-live-un-says-aid-work-in-gaza-disrupted-after-israel-orders-evacuation-of-deir-al-balah-area

Author : Tom Ambrose

Publish date : 2024-08-27 08:34:38

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