Mourners carry the body of a 40-year-old Palestinian who was killed during an Israeli settlers’ attack, during his funeral near Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on August 27.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Israel said it killed three Hamas militants in an air strike in the occupied West Bank on Friday (August 30, 2024) taking the death toll, from a large-scale military operation now in its third day, to at least 19.
A top UN aid official meanwhile questioned “what has become of our basic humanity”, as the war raged on in Gaza and humanitarian operations struggle to respond.
The United Nations has warned the military operation which Israel launched in the West Bank early on Wednesday (August 28, 2024) is “fuelling an already explosive situation” in the territory and has pressed Israel to end it.
In the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged she will not change Washington’s policy of supplying weapons to Israel if elected to the top job in November. But she stressed it was time to “end this war”.
Israel has described its raids on towns and refugee camps across the northern West Bank as “counter-terrorism” operations.
They have killed at least 19 Palestinians since Wednesday (August 28, 2024), the military and the Palestinian health ministry said.
The military said it killed three Hamas militants in an air strike near the northern city of Jenin on Friday (August 30, 2024).
Witnesses told the media that the strike hit a car in the town of Zababdeh, southeast of the city.
Israeli troops pulled back from other West Bank towns late Thursday (August 29, 2024) but fighting raged on around Jenin, long a hub of militant activity.
Loud explosions have been reported from the city’s refugee camp and thick plumes of smoke have been seen rising from the area.
Vaccination ‘pauses’
The World Health Organization said Israel had agreed to at least three days of “humanitarian pauses” in parts of Gaza, starting Sunday (September 1, 2024) to facilitate a vaccination drive after the first case of polio in a quarter of a century was recorded in the territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the measures were “not a ceasefire” in the nearly 11-month-old war triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack.
In the West Bank, the army said it killed seven militants on Thursday (August 29, 2024), including five militants in Tulkarem refugee camp.
A military statement said one of the five was Muhammad Jaber, also known as Abu Shujaa, who Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said was its commander in the nearby Nur Shams refugee camp.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said at least 45 people had been detained in the West Bank since Wednesday (August 28, 2024) . An Israeli military spokesman said “10 wanted individuals were arrested”.
‘Basic sense of humanity’
In Gaza, the Israeli military said on Thursday (August 29, 2024) that it had “eliminated dozens” of militants in a day of combat and strikes.
Israeli shelling in the Jabalia refugee camp killed two people on Friday (August 30, 2024), the civil defence agency in the Hamas-ruled territory said.
The UN had to halt the movement of aid and aid workers within Gaza on Monday (August 26, 2024) due to a new Israeli evacuation order for the Deir el-Balah area, which had become a hub for its workers.
“More than 88% of Gaza’s territory has come under an (Israeli) order to evacuate at some point,” the acting head of the UN humanitarian office, Joyce Msuya.
She said civilians were being forced into just 11 percent of the Gaza Strip, already one of the most densely populated territories in the world before the war.
“What we have witnessed over the past 11 months… calls into question the world’s commitment to the international legal order that was designed to prevent these tragedies,” Msuya said.
“It forces us to ask: what has become of our basic sense of humanity?”
