Turkey condemns ‘war crime’ after Israel strikes humanitarian zone in southern Gaza
Turkey’s foreign ministry has denounced the deadly overnight Israeli airstrikes in the designated al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, describing it as a “war crime”. Health authorities in Gaza said the Israeli strikes on a tent camp for displaced Palestinians killed at least 40 people and injured 60 others.
“We condemn Israel’s massacre of dozens of Palestinians in an attack on the tents of civilians in the so-called ‘humanitarian zone’ in Khan Younis,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement, saying Israel had “added a new crime to its list of war crimes”.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been a vocal opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza. He has accused Israel of genocide, called for it to be punished in international courts and criticised western nations for backing the country’s military assault.
Key events
UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland on Tuesday condemned what he said was a deadly Israeli strike on Khan Younis in Gaza, which left dozens dead and wounded according to local medical authorities.
In a statement, the Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs said the international community’s failure to implement international law to halt the war has allowed Israel to “persist in committing further massacres” in al-Mawasi and other areas in Gaza.
“An immediate ceasefire is the only way to protect Palestinian civilians and create a suitable environment for achieving a prisoner exchange deal,” the ministry added in the statement.
The comments come after witnesses and medical officials said Israeli airstrikes on the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone” in the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Tuesday killed at least 40 people and injured another 60.
Death toll in Gaza reaches 41,020, says health ministry
At least 41,020 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,925 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
The toll includes 32 deaths and 100 injuries in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry.
The health ministry has said thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the enclave.
ActionAid said humanitarian workers in Gaza have faced “severe safety risks and huge challenges” trying to deliver aid over the last two weeks, amid reports of attacks by the Israeli military on aid warehouses and vehicles.
The charity highlighted the success of the polio vaccination campaign (for children under 10), which is now entering its second week, having started on September 1 (see earlier post at 07.57 for more details).
The UN’s Palestine relief agency, Unrwa, has said that over 446,000 children in Gaza have been vaccinated against polio so far, after Hamas and Israel agreed on limited pauses in their fighting.
But despite reaching so many children in the vaccination drive, ActionAid said there are fears around the transportation of vaccines to medical points around the Gaza Strip, as well as critical fuel shortages at hospitals.
The following is contained within ActionAid’s press release summarising a new report detailing the challenges aid organisations continue to face in Gaza:
Aid workers continue to face huge logistical challenges as the humanitarian space in Gaza shrinks. In August alone, Israeli forces issued 16 displacement orders, which have reduced the so-called “humanitarian zones” to less than 11% of the strip. As a result, Solidarités International reports that it had to temporarily suspend the operation of one of its desalination plants located in an area under displacement orders, significantly reducing its ability to distribute drinkable water, while three ActionAid partners were left unable to access their warehouses.
This morning, Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians and wounded 60 others in a camp for displaced families located in an Israeli military-designated “humanitarian” zone in Al-Mawasi, proving yet again that nowhere is safe in Gaza.
In the West Bank, aid activities have been severely disrupted by Israeli military incursions into northern cities and refugee camps. Due to the extreme danger and movement restrictions, Médecins du Monde reported that it was only able to access displaced civilians in the Jenin governorate six days after the army’s operation in the area began, causing a detrimental delay in the provision of direly needed medical and psychological emergency support.
Turkey condemns ‘war crime’ after Israel strikes humanitarian zone in southern Gaza
Turkey’s foreign ministry has denounced the deadly overnight Israeli airstrikes in the designated al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, describing it as a “war crime”. Health authorities in Gaza said the Israeli strikes on a tent camp for displaced Palestinians killed at least 40 people and injured 60 others.
“We condemn Israel’s massacre of dozens of Palestinians in an attack on the tents of civilians in the so-called ‘humanitarian zone’ in Khan Younis,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement, saying Israel had “added a new crime to its list of war crimes”.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been a vocal opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza. He has accused Israel of genocide, called for it to be punished in international courts and criticised western nations for backing the country’s military assault.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have downed a US drone in the western province of Saada, according to the group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree.
Saree said it was the ninth aircraft of this type to be downed by the Iran-back group since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza last October.
Over the weekend, he claimed the Houthi rebels shot down another US-made MQ-9 drone over the country’s Marib province, Sky News reported.
The Houthis are backed by Iran as part of its longstanding hostility with Saudi Arabia and are supporting Hamas in the war in Gaza. Soon after the Hamas-led 7 October attacks on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed, the Houthi leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said his forces were “ready to move in the hundreds of thousands to join the Palestinian people and confront the enemy”.
Israeli defence minister says Hamas no longer exists as a military formation in Gaza
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said said Hamas’s military capabilities had been severely damaged after more than 11 months of war, claiming the Palestinian militant group no longer existed as a military formation in Gaza.
“Hamas as a military formation no longer exists. Hamas is engaged in guerrilla warfare and we are still fighting Hamas terrorists and pursuing Hamas leadership,” he told foreign journalists.
The Israeli military said in July it had killed over half of the leadership of Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam brigades, and that it had killed or apprehended over 14,000 Hamas fighters out of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 fighters that the group had at the start of the war last year. These figures have been disputed by Hamas.
In the briefing with journalists, Gallant also offered his support for a hostage release agreement in the first phase of a Gaza truce deal, saying it would give Israel a “strategic opportunity” to address other security challenges. Bringing the hostages home is “the right thing to do,” he said.
Gallant has clashed repeatedly with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and hardline religious nationalist ministers over the need to reach a deal to halt the war and bring the remaining hostages back in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Netanyahu is under huge pressure to agree a hostage-for-peace deal with Hamas that has been under negotiation for several months. A major impasse in the negotiations has been the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt and the Netzarim east-west corridor across the territory. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel retain control of the corridors to prevent smuggling and catch militant fighters. Hamas is demanding the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
About 250 hostages were taken by the Hamas-led 7 October attacks on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed. 97 hostages abducted during the attack remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces, according to the Times of Israel.
Daniel Hurst
Daniel Hurst is Guardian Australia’s foreign affairs and defence correspondent
Australia is coordinating with the UK and other allies to “pressure” Israel to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and to stop the erosion of longstanding norms protecting aid workers.
The Australian government has also explicitly backed the UK’s decision to curb arms exports to Israel, putting it at odds with the US, which is reported to have privately warned Britain against the move.
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, told Guardian Australia: “Australia is working with partners – including the UK – to put pressure to see a real change in the situation in Gaza.”
The latest comments are another sign of the Australian government’s hardening rhetoric about the Israeli assault on Gaza, where about 41,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past 11 months and many more have been injured and displaced from their homes.
You can read the full story here:
‘Entire families disappeared under the sand’ in deadly Israeli attack on al-Mawasi, official says
As we reported in an earlier post, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes on the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in the southern city of Khan Younis had killed 40 people this morning.
Civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughair said emergency crews are still working “to recover 15 missing people as a result of targeting the tents of the displaced in Mawasi”.
“Entire families disappeared in the Mawasi Khan Younis massacre, under the sand, in deep holes,” said civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal.
The Israeli military has questioned the strike’s death toll provided by authorities in Gaza, saying the numbers “do not align with the information held by the IDF”.
The military named several Palestinian militants it said were killed in the strike, describing them as “directly involved in the execution of the 7 October massacre”.
Hamas said claims its fighters were present at the scene of the strike were “a blatant lie”.
A number of Palestinian citizens reportedly suffocated earlier today after breathing in tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers at the Hamra military checkpoint in the Jordan Valley.
This report, from Palestinian news agency Wafa, has not yet been independently verified by the Guardian:
A Wafa correspondent reported that the occupation fired tear gas bombs at citizens while they were waiting to cross the checkpoint, causing a number of them to suffocate.
The Israeli occupation forces also obstructed citizens’ passage through the checkpoint yesterday and fired tear gas bombs at them.
The checkpoint has been seeing military reinforcements and repeated closures of citizens’ movement for months.
The Hamra military checkpoint is a main link between the cities of the West Bank and the Palestinian Jordan Valley, and is one of the main checkpoints between Tubas and the Jordan Valley. However, Israel controls the movement of citizens through it.
Jordanians went to the polls on Tuesday in a parliamentary election overshadowed by Israel’s war in Gaza.
Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, becoming only the second Arab state to do so after Egypt, but around half its population is of Palestinian origin, and protests calling for the treaty’s cancellation have been frequent since the war erupted in October.
“What is happening in Gaza … (the) killing, destruction and tragedies broadcast daily on television, makes us feel pain, helplessness, humiliation and degradation, and makes us forget the elections and everything that is happening around us,” Omar Mohammed, a 43-year-old civil servant, told AFP.
“I feel bitterness. I am not sure yet if I will vote in these elections,” he added.
Candidates for the election in Jordan include tribal leaders, centrists, leftists and those from the country’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Action Front (IAF).
“The Gaza war and the Palestinian cause occupy a major place in Jordanian elections, as all eyes and minds are on Gaza and Palestine and the massacres taking place there against the Palestinian people,” IAF candidate Saleh Armouti said.
“The elections … should not be delayed and they serve the Palestinian cause and the region, but I also fear that there will be some abstention from voting due to these events,” he said.
The border crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank – the King Hussein Bridge (also known as the Allenby Bridge crossing) – has reopened to travellers but remains closed to commercial activity, according to the Israel Airports Authority.
It closed after three Israeli workers were killed at the border crossing on Sunday when a Jordanian truck driver opened fire on them. You can read more on this story here.
On Monday – prior to the Israeli attack on the al-Mawasi camp – UN secretary general António Guterres commented on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying:
The level of suffering we are witnessing in Gaza is unprecedented in my mandate as secretary-general of the United Nations.
I’ve never seen such a level of death and destruction as we are seeing in Gaza in the last few months.
Stressing the need for a ceasefire, Guterres said that the UN had offered to monitor any truce, but that it was “unrealistic” to think the UN could play a role in Gaza’s future, either by administering the territory or providing a peacekeeping force, because Israel is unlikely to accept a UN role.
Of course, we’ll be ready to do whatever the international community asked for us … The question is whether the parties would accept it, and in particular whether Israel would accept it.
Third phase in polio vaccination campaign to begin on 10 September, says UN
The third phase on an ongoing campaign to vaccinate children in Gaza against polio is set to begin on Tuesday. From 10 September to 13 September, children in northern Gaza will receive vaccines, according to the UN.
Limited pauses in fighting have been held to allow the vaccination campaign, which aims to reach 640,000 children in Gaza after the territory’s first polio case in around 25 years. While these temporary pauses, agreed between Hamas and Israel, have generally been stuck to in certain areas in Gaza, there have been ongoing reports of Israeli airstrikes killing Palestinian people in others.
A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.
“Tuesday is the hardest part when we roll out the campaign in the north. Hopefully, that will work so we complete the first stage of the campaign The second and final stage is planned for the end of the month when we have to do all of this all over again,” Unrwa director of communications, Juliette Touma, told Reuters.
On Sunday, the second phase of Gaza’s polio vaccination campaign concluded with 256,572 children in Khan Younis and Rafah reached over four days.
Attaf al-Shaar, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah, said the deadly Israeli airstrike on al-Mawasi, happened just after midnight and caused a fire.
“The people were buried in the sand. They were retrieved as body parts,” she told an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Three Palestinians were killed on Tuesday in an Israeli bombing of Al-Shawa square east of Gaza City, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported. The bomb targeted civilians at a falafel cart on Al-Hakima street, the outlet reported. These claims have not yet been independently verified.
Welcome back to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis. The main story today is the reports of dozens of people being killed in al- Mawasi, a supposed humanitarian zone of safety, in Israeli airstrikes.
A Gaza civil defence official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) early this morning that “40 martyrs and 60 injured were recovered and transferred” to nearby hospitals following an attack inside the humanitarian zone in Khan Younis, the Palestinian territory’s main southern city. We will bring you more on this as it comes.