An injured Palestinian boy bids farewell to family members killed during Israeli bombardment overnight at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah on the southern Gaza Strip on December 7, 2023. Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP
Doha, Qatar: At least 16,248 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7 as Israel continues a heavy military offensive in the south of the enclave.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked a seldom-used Article 99 to force the Security Council to address the war in Gaza, warning of a deepening “catastrophe”. Several leaders have also backed Guterres’s emergency call for Gaza ceasefire, including World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In a statement on X, the WHO chief said: “I support Secretary-General @antonioguterres’ letter to the @UN Security Council, invoking Article 99 and appealing for a ceasefire. #Gaza’s health system is on its knees and near total collapse. We need peace for health.”
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[11:30 pm Doha Time] Qatar's Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs HE Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani participated in the meeting of members of the ministerial committee assigned by the Extraordinary Joint Arab-Islamic Summit, with members of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Developments in the Gaza Strip, immediate ceasefire, civilian protection, and ensuring the application of the rules of international law and international humanitarian law were discussed. Read more.
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[8pm Doha Time] Qatar strongly condemns Israeli occupation's permission for extremists’ demonstration in occupied East Jerusalem. Read more.
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[7:10 pm Doha Time] More killed delivered to Gaza hospital yesterday than wounded
For the first time since the war began, the number of people killed surpassed the number of people who arrived at the hospital wounded, said Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).
The medical organisation said 115 people killed arrived at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza. “The hospital is full, the morgue is full. We call on Israeli Forces to stop the indiscriminate bombing of the Gaza Strip and protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
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[4:30pm Doha Time] Overnight, Israel ramped up attacks across the Gaza Strip. Health ministry said at least 350 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours.
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[4:05pm Doha Time] Qatari plane heads to Al Arish carrying aid for Gaza
A plane belonging to the Qatari Armed Forces headed to the city of Al-Arish in the sisterly Arab Republic of Egypt today, December 7, 2023. Read more
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[3:58 pm Doha Time] Gaza death toll surpasses 17,000
The health ministry in Gaza says the total number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since October 7 is now 17,177, with more than 46,000 others wounded.
In the past 24 hours, 350 Palestinians have been killed, the ministry added.
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[2: 15 pm Doha Time] Red Crescent: Ambulance services in northern Gaza halted
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has announced that its ambulance services in northern Gaza have come to a standstill as a result of the exhaustion of fuel supplies and the closure of functional hospitals there.
In a statement, the Red Crescent said this makes the evacuation of the wounded and killed impossible.
“However, work is still ongoing at the PRCS advanced medical post-medical established by the society’s ambulance team in Jabalia to handle minor and moderate cases, receiving at least 250 injured individuals daily,” the statement said.
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[1:03 pm Doha Time] Northern Gaza facing distressing levels of hunger: WFP
The United Nations World Food Programme has published a report highlighting food insecurity in the Gaza Strip, pointing out that households in northern Gaza are “experiencing alarming levels of hunger”.
At least 97 percent of households in northern Gaza have “inadequate food consumption”, with nine out of 10 people going one full day and night without food.
Palestinian children collect food at a donation point provided by a charity group in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on December 6, 2023. Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP
In the southern governorates, a third of the households have reported high levels of severe or very severe hunger, with 53 percent experiencing moderate hunger.
Since October 7, 1,249 trucks carrying food assistance have reached Gaza. Before the war, about 500 trucks would enter the Gaza Strip on a daily basis.
WFP says that in order to provide food assistance to the affected population in Gaza, 100 trucks with food would be required to cross inside every day.
[12:00 pm Doha Time] More than half of wounded in Gaza need treatment abroad, Red Crescent says
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society says that 60 percent of the wounded in the Gaza Strip require urgent medical treatment abroad, pointing to the collapse of the health sector in the territory.
“The occupation forces are deliberately arresting and abusing the sick and wounded, including paramedics from our crews, and we are on the cusp of a health and environmental catastrophe in the Strip,” a statement said.
A man carries away an injured girl following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 6, 2023. Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP
The Red Crescent went on to say that it has established a medical field unit to treat the wounded in the northern Gaza Strip, where there is no functional hospital, and managed to evacuate a number of the wounded and sick patients to hospitals in the centre and south of Gaza.
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[11:10 am Doha Time] Two months of ‘death, destruction and displacement’
Palestinians have been experiencing the worst of living conditions under heavy Israeli bombardment since day one of the war.
An Al Jazeera reporter stated: "We are talking about a carpet bombardment of entire neighbourhoods and residential blocks."
People watch as others search for victims amid the rubble of a smouldering building, following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 6, 2023. Photo by Mahmud HAMS / AFP
"A large number of critically injured Palestinians overwhelmed their hospitals with this extreme shortage of medical supplies and necessities to keep them surviving. There is a serious lack of everything that Palestinians need to survive," he added.
He also added that the "mood of these more than 60 days has been death, destruction and displacement."
"We’re talking about more than 60 days of constant movement and running for their lives from one place to another, from the extreme northern part of the Gazan City of Beit Hanoon to the extreme south by Rafah, where many people are being packed and squeezed," he stated.
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[8:50 am Doha Time] ‘You are lucky if you’ve only lost one person’
Gaza resident Hossam Wail Abu Shammallah told Al Jazeera that he has lost 120 members of his family since the war began. Despite having lived through four wars with Israel already, he said, “Combined, they’re all nothing” compared with what the besieged strip is going through now.
A man mourns over the bodies of victims killed during Israeli bombardment overnight at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah on the southern Gaza Strip on December 7, 2023. Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP
“The amount of massacres, ethnic cleansing and displacing people multiple times. If we look at the statistics, we are already past the number of the Nakba,” he said, referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, known as the “catastrophe”.
“We are at the point that it’s quite impossible to find someone that hasn’t lost anyone, whether from his family, friends, relatives, or someone from work or school.”
