Published On 16 Nov 202316 Nov 2023
Here is the situation on Thursday, November 16, 2023:
Latest developments
- Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed on Thursday that fighter jets had struck the house of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau.
- After four failed attempts to respond to the Israel-Palestine war, the United Nations Security Council passed a Malta-sponsored resolution on “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza on Wednesday. No member state voted against the resolution, 12 voted in favour, and three – Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – abstained.
- The first truck carrying fuel to Gaza since Israeli bombardment started on October 7 arrived through the Rafah border crossing on Wednesday. Over the past few weeks, hospitals, sanitation systems, and water pumps are just a few of the infrastructures that have shut down due to fuel depletion amid a total Israeli siege.
- Two planes from Egypt carrying more than two dozen cancer patients from Gaza arrived in the Turkish capital, Ankara, shortly after midnight on Thursday (about 21:30 GMT, Wednesday), according to the AFP news agency.
- Some 150 demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in Gaza clashed with police outside the Democratic Party’s national committee headquarters in Washington, DC late on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press news agency.
Human impact and fighting
- After relentless bombardment across northern Gaza, including its hospitals, as well as displacement of Palestinians to the south, Israel is indicating an expansion of its assault across the Gaza Strip. “There is no place in Gaza that we will not reach,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli troops along the Gaza border on Wednesday, according to the AP.
- Two Israeli soldiers have been killed while fighting in northern Gaza, Israel’s military announced early on Thursday.
- Deadly Israeli air raids hit two residential buildings in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza’s central petrol station, and a mosque in al-Sabrah neighbourhood of central Gaza on Thursday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
- As Palestinians continue to make the long, taxing journey from north to south Gaza, often by foot, they are also “reporting the presence of dead bodies in the streets”, according to the situation report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released on Wednesday. Some have also reported being arrested, stripped down, and beaten by Israeli soldiers in what was supposed to be a “safe corridor” to flee south, OCHA reported.
- An up-to-date death toll for Gaza could not be made available for the fifth day in a row owing to the collapse of communication and medical services, according to OCHA.
- At least six Palestinians have been arrested in overnight Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa.
Situation at Gaza’s hospitals