Here’s how things stand on Thursday, February 22, 2024:
Fighting and humanitarian crisis
- Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) condemned an Israeli tank strike on a shelter in Gaza housing the relatives of its staff in which two women were killed and six others injured, five of whom were women and children.
- At least three people were killed and more injured by Israeli air attacks overnight on Rafah in southern Gaza, the Palestinian state news agency Wafa reported.
- Reuters news agency said new satellite images show an area that sources said was being prepared by Egypt near the Gaza border, which could accommodate Palestinians in case an Israeli offensive into Rafah prompts a mass movement of refugees across the frontier.
- According to local reports, sirens have been heard in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat, warning of possible incoming aerial threats.
- Medical workers at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis are working in unbearable conditions due to Israeli attacks on the facility. They have called for the hospital to be restored to full functional capacity rather than be evacuated so that they can continue to help patients.
- According to the latest data from the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, only four trucks carrying vital humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Wednesday. Aid agencies say hundreds of trucks are needed daily amid a shortage of food and other essential items.
Regional tensions and diplomacy
- The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it conducted four “self-defence strikes” against seven mobile Houthi antiship cruise missiles and one mobile antiship ballistic missile launcher in Yemen on Wednesday.
- US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Yemen’s Houthis are “behaving like a terrorist organisation”, adding that their attacks on shipping vessels are “endangering an already fragile humanitarian situation” and “do nothing to help the Palestinians”.
- Separately, Hezbollah said it launched 13 attacks against Israel on Wednesday targeting several Israeli bases and fired rockets at the Israeli towns of Metula and Matzuva. This comes after Israel bombed deep into southern Lebanon.
- China and Iran will be the first of the 12 countries to speak at the ICJ hearings on Israel’s occupation of Palestine on Thursday.
- Brazil criticised the “paralysis” of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine at the opening of a G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
- Israeli settlers have attacked the village of Asira al-Qibliya, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, wounding a Palestinian man as they threw stones and attempted to set a home on fire, Wafa reported.
- Israeli forces killed a Palestinian child in the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya city, Wafa reported.
- OCHA said 100 children were among 394 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7.
