- Israeli tanks seal off Rafah from the south and complete the encirclement of the “red zone”, where Israel’s military has ordered 100,000 displaced Palestinian residents to evacuate as the Israeli war cabinet authorises an expansion of operations in the southern city.
- US State Department report says Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law, but Washington will continue to supply arms to Israel for now.
- UN Security Council members call for independent and comprehensive investigation into mass graves in Gaza where hundreds of bodies have been discovered around the Nasser and al-Shifa Hospitals.
- At least 34,943 people have been killed and 78,572 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive.
- Palestinians flee Rafah after Israel’s evacuation orders
- A person sits atop a vehicle loaded with belongings, as Palestinians prepare to evacuate from the eastern part of Rafah [Hatem Khaled/Reuters]
- [Hatem Khaled/Reuters]
- About 300,000 Palestinians evacuated east RafahThe Israeli army says about 300,000 people have left eastern Rafah since it ordered an evacuation of the southern Gaza city this week.“So far, approximately 300,000 Gazans have moved towards the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi” since the order was issued on Monday, the military said in a statement.On Friday, the UN said more than 100,000 people had fled Rafah in recent days.The military ordered the evacuation of eastern Rafah on Monday as it seized control of the border crossing with Egypt ahead of its long-threatened ground assault in the city where some 1.4 million people are sheltering.Earlier on Saturday the military ordered people to leave more areas in eastern Rafah and northern Gaza Strip as it pressed ahead with its attacks.The evacuation orders and the army’s intense bombing of eastern Rafah have raised widespread international alarm.Almost 35,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.
- Displaced Palestinians transport their belonging atop a car as they flee to a safer area in Rafah [AFP]
- ‘No one can deny Zionist power and grip on American political system’After the UN General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed the Palestinians’ drive for full membership, which is blocked by the United States, Robert Wood, Washington’s ambassador to the UN, said it remains his country’s view “that unilateral measures at the UN and on the ground will not advance this goal”.Speaking to Al Jazeera, Sami al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, said frustration is growing within the UN body due to the US’s continuous use of its veto power in favour of Israel.“We have two states in this system – the United States and Israel – on one hand, and virtually the world on the other,” he said.“People are extremely frustrated because they can’t get this war to end, they can’t get any kind of resolution and now even the humanitarian aid, which the United States has been threatening Israel, is being cut off for the past four-five days – nothing has been done about it,” al-Arian added.“With all this destruction and havoc taking place and yet the United States does not see that it can intervene and make a difference.”Al-Arian said “no one can deny [the] Zionist power and grip on the American political system”, adding that the US has also been using Israel in order to maintain its interests “even though its interests now are being severely harmed”.
- Israeli forces have arrested 15 Palestinians in West Bank since FridayAmong those detained were a woman and former prisoners, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, which keeps a daily log of Israeli arrests.The arrests took place in the governorates of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron, Qalqilya and Jerusalem.They bring the total number of Palestinians detained in the occupied West Bank since October 7 to 8,680, according to the Prisoner’s Society.
- Kuwaiti Hospital among places ‘threatened with evacuation’Saheb al-Hams, a hospital director in Rafah, has said that “sadly” the Kuwaiti Specialty Hospital in Rafah city “is now included in the places threatened with evacuation” following Israel’s latest order.“There is no other place for patients and injured people to go to but this hospital,” al-Hams said in a video message to journalists.The director called for “immediate international protection” for the medical facility.
Israel’s war on Gaza live: Israel orders further Rafah evacuation
