U.S., Europeans Cut UNRWA Funds After Israeli Accusation
GAZA (KI) – The occupying regime of Israel pressed ahead on Saturday with its brutal campaign in Gaza’s Khan Younis area, while bad weather hit displaced Palestinians seeking refuge further north in the battered enclave.
Residents reported heavy aerial and tank fire across Khan Younis, a part of southern Gaza that has become the focus of the occupying regime’s ground invasion and around two main hospitals there.
Hamas said its fighters fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli tank in southwest Khan Younis.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, allied with Hamas, said its fighters were engaging Zionist forces in the area and had fired rockets into Occupied Palestine.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli strikes hit near the largest functioning medical facility in the south, Nasser Hospital, and Al-Amal Hospital, where one person was martyred in the courtyard, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRC).
The PRCS said the hospital, which it runs, had been targeted and come under siege by Zionist troops for six consecutive days.
“The Israeli occupation continues to bombard the vicinity of the hospital and open fire, jeopardizing the safety of medical staff, the wounded, patients, and approximately 7,000 displaced individuals who sought refuge there,” it wrote on X.
The Israeli bombardment was compromising healthcare and endangering the lives of doctors, patients and displaced people, said ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra.
In a ruling on Friday, the World Court stopped short of ordering a ceasefire but ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians and do more to help civilians. The regime’s extremist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterwards that the war on Gaza would continue.
In the southern city of Rafah, Zainab Khalil, 57, displaced with her family several times until reaching shelter not far from the border with Egypt, said the International Court of Justice’s ruling was important but not enough. “We want a ceasefire now,” she said.
Some 26,257 Palestinians have been martyred and nearly 65,000 wounded so far, including 174 killed in the last 24 hours, Gaza health authorities said on Saturday. The majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million population has been displaced.
The Zionist regime says 220 soldiers have been killed since it launched its ground invasion. Palestinian groups say the toll is much higher.
Residents and Hamas fighters reported fighting on Saturday in the central and northern parts of the enclave, where heavy rain flooded tents of those displaced, forcing some to seek alternative shelter in the middle of the night.
Tensions rose between Israel and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after the Zionist regime alleged several UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas attack of October 7, leading some key donor countries to suspend funding.
Britain pounced on the allegation to announced that it is “temporarily pausing” future funding for UNRWA in Gaza.
The decision came after the U.S., Australia, Canada, Italy and Finland suspended their financing of UNRWA.
The Palestinian foreign ministry criticized what it described as an Israeli campaign against UNRWA, and Hamas condemned the termination of employee contracts “based on information derived from the Zionist enemy”.
Palestinians in Gaza are already resorting to extreme measures amid growing starvation due to Israel’s bombardment and siege.
Families have been forced to use animal fodder and bird feed baked into their bread, sometimes causing medical problems, particularly in young children.
Abu Alaa, an owner of a mill in central Gaza, said that the food available to people is inedible.
“People are mixing bird feed and animal food into their food. This is not right, it’s not healthy. People are grinding this and mixing it into their bread,” he told Middle East Eye.
Families wait in line for hours every day to get just a few pounds of flour. However, often, by the time families get to the front of the queue, the flour would have already run out. Meanwhile, on many occasions, people are forced to scatter due to Israeli bombardment.
According to a report by the UN in December, 93 percent of the people in Gaza are facing “crisis levels of hunger,” and a quarter of the population of the strip faces “catastrophic hunger and starvation.”
On Thursday, the World Food Program (WFP) said in a statement that “the entire population is acutely food insecure. More than a quarter of them – half a million people – are at IPC5, the most extreme stage of hunger. They are starving”.
Euro-Med Human Rights said that it had documented numerous deaths from starvation, including infants.
Mixing animal feed into bread has already started to have adverse effects on people’s health, however, despite this, families say they have no other alternative.
Abu Anas, a local who lives near a mill, said that any food available in Gaza is no longer affordable, particularly after nearly all bakeries and supermarkets in the Strip have been bombed.
Instead, families are using “stone age” techniques and makeshift ovens to make food, and, if they have the means, sell it.
Residents are also pumping water from wells, and mixing sea water and wastewater amid a shortage of clean water.
Jaber, another local in Gaza, says that even if the taste is bad, he and others are mixing different types of flour and ingredients to make bread.
“Sometimes the bread is made and it comes out red or yellow because of the ingredients mixed in it,” he said, adding that this is not healthy.
Ground barley and corn are also being mixed into the flour.
In some cases, Palestinians have been forced to trawl through the ground to find scraps of food.
Human Rights Watch has said that starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Gaza, calling it a war crime.
“Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival,” the organization said in a report.
The extreme levels of starvation come as Zionist protesters, including relatives of those taken captive to Gaza on 7 October, have been blocking emergency aid from reaching the enclave through the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Palestinians waiting for aid inside Gaza have also been attacked by Israeli bombing in the past week.
In Rafah, where over half of Gaza’s people are now taking cover in shelters and tents, the Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike killed three people in a house there.
It was not immediately clear who the casualties were and there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
In the occupied West Bank, one man was martyred in an exchange of fire with Israeli forces near Jenin, residents said.
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