Middle East crisis live: everyone in northern Gaza at ‘imminent risk’ of death, warns Unicef chief

Entire population in northern Gaza at ‘imminent risk of death’, Unicef warns
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s ongoing wars on Gaza and Lebanon.
The entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is at “imminent risk” of dying from disease, famine or “ongoing bombardments” by the Israeli military, the head of the United Nations children’s agency (Unicef), Catherine Russell, has warned.
In a statement issued yesterday, Russell said that in the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children had reportedly been killed in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historical refugee camps, where deadly Israeli airstrikes destroyed two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people.
Israel severely restricted aid to Gaza in October, allowing in only about a third of the humanitarian assistance that entered the previous month.
Russell said:
Civilians and civilian structures, including residential buildings, as well as humanitarian workers and their vehicles, must always be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Displacement or evacuation orders do not permit any party to the conflict to regard all individuals or objects in an area as military targets; nor do they exempt them from their obligations to distinguish between military and civilian objectives, be proportional and take all feasible precautions in attacks.
Yet these principles are being flaunted over and over again, leaving tens of thousands of children killed, injured, and deprived of essential services needed for survival.
Attacks on civilians, including humanitarian workers, and what remains of Gaza’s civilian facilities and infrastructure must stop.
This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza.
Attacks on civilians, including humanitarian workers, and what remains of Gaza’s civilian facilities and infrastructure must stop.
My statement👇 https://t.co/TLNYtbN6du
— Catherine Russell (@unicefchief) November 2, 2024
Her comments come as Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported this morning that at least nine Palestinian people were killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting two homes in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya, also in northern Gaza, as well as the southern city of Rafah.
At least five Palestinians have been killed and others injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a house belonging to Warsh al-Agha family in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. pic.twitter.com/mODbwXXOfJ
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) November 3, 2024
The Israeli military launched an intense assault in northern Gaza on 6 October, claiming it was trying to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping. But many civilians have been killed in the attacks, with residents saying Israeli forces besieged hospitals and shelters for displaced people and targeted residential areas.
Residents in the north, under sweeping evacuation orders, say they feel trapped as there is nowhere safe for them to flee to due to the relentless Israeli attacks there.
Here are some of the other key developments:
-
American B-52 bombers have arrived in the Middle East, the US military has confirmed. “B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility,” the military command for the Middle East and surrounding countries said in a post on social media. The US – Israel’s biggest arms supplier and diplomatic ally – announced on Friday evening that it was sending the bombers, fighter and tanker aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the Middle East. “Should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every measure necessary to defend our people,” Pentagon spokesperson Maj Gen Pat Ryder said.
B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. pic.twitter.com/6mDs4n5G2u
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) November 2, 2024
-
The Israeli military said about 10 rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel after air raid sirens were sounded in the Haifa Bay and Galilee areas. Some of the rockets were intercepted while others struck open ground. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
-
The Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes on southern Lebanon overnight, including the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiya in the Nabatieh district, according to reports.
-
Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon, an Israeli military official said on Saturday. The operative appears to be a Lebanese sea captain. Earlier, Lebanese authorities said it was investigating whether Israel was behind the capture of a sea captain who was taken away by a group of armed men who had landed on the coast near the northern town of Batroun on Friday.
-
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has released the following statement on the US’s military support to Israel amid its deadly wars in Gaza and Lebanon: “Ongoing events in Lebanon & Gaza have resulted in the martyrdom of 50,000 ppl in the last year, mostly women & children… The US that claims to be an advocate of human rights, supports & is complicit in those crimes. Plans & weapons used are from the US.”
Key events
Israeli military issues new evacuation order for Lebanon’s Baalbek region
The Israeli military called for the evacuation of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, warning that it was poised to strike Hezbollah targets there and in nearby Douris.
“For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate these buildings and those adjacent to them immediately and stay away from them for a distance of no less than 500 meters within the next four hours,” the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.
#عاجل إلى جميع السكان المتواجدين في منطقة بعلبك وتحديدًا في المباني المحددة في الخرائط المرفقة والمباني المجاورة لها
⭕️أنتم تتواجدون بالقرب من منشآت ومصالح تابعة لحزب الله حيث سيعمل ضدها جيش الدفاع على المدى الزمني القريب
⭕️من أجل سلامتكم وسلامة أبناء عائلتكم عليكم اخلاء هذه… pic.twitter.com/qfvSP5hUJW
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) November 3, 2024
Israel has broadened its deadly airstrikes in recent weeks to bigger urban hubs in Lebanon, like the town of Baalbek, home to about 80,000 people, after initially targeting smaller border villages in the south, where the IDF says Hezbollah conducts operations.
More than 2,100 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israel’s war on the country over the past five weeks, and 1.2 million others displaced by Israeli attacks, according to Lebanese officials.
The UN has said many people forced to flee Lebanon (many of whom have gone to Syria) have slept overnight in their vehicles, facing harsh conditions as they search for safety.
Al Jazeera has been told by medical sources that Israeli attacks have killed 23 people in Gaza, including 13 in the northern part of the territory, since dawn. The Guardian is yet to independently verify these figures.
Palestinian officials have said an Israeli drone strike on a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio injured six people, including four children, on Saturday.
Dr Munir al-Boursh, director general of the Gaza health ministry, told the Associated Press that a quadcopter struck the Sheikh Radwan clinic in Gaza City early on Saturday afternoon, just a few minutes after a UN delegation left the health facility.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef expressed alarm over reports that the clinic was hit during the vaccination drive.
Rosalia Bollen, a spokesperson for Unicef, said:
The reports of this attack are even more disturbing as the Sheikh Radwan Clinic is one of the health points where parents can get their children vaccinated.
Today’s attack occurred while the humanitarian pause was still in effect, despite assurances given that the pause would be respected from 6am to 4pm.
The polio campaign began on 1 September after the WHO confirmed in August that a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
The first round of the vaccine campaign in early September successfully reached 559,000 children under 10 years old. The vaccines were able to be administered due to local “humanitarian pauses” to fighting in Gaza agreed by Israel and Palestinian groups (while these temporary pauses were generally stuck to in certain areas in Gaza, there were reports of Israeli airstrikes killing Palestinian people in others).
The second phase of the drive began yesterday having been postponed last month due to relentless Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza, mass displacement of Palestinians and a lack of access in the region (you can read this story to find out more).
A Bangladeshi worker, Mohammad Nizam, 31, was killed in an airstrike in Lebanon on Saturday afternoon, Dhaka’s foreign ministry has said.
Nizam was killed in the airstrike as he stopped at a coffee shop on the way to work in Beirut, Bangladesh’s ambassador to Lebanon, Javed Tanveer Khan, said.
Mohmmad Jalaluddin said his younger brother Nizam had lived in Beirut for more than a decade, and had not been among the estimated 1,800 Bangladeshis who had registered for an evacuation flight home.
“We want to bury him in our ancestral home, and are now waiting for the government’s response,” Jalaluddin told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
But senior Bangladeshi foreign ministry official Shah Mohammad Tanvir Monsur said it was challenging to arrange a flight into Beirut.
Monsur said:
With the ongoing war, there are hardly any flights from Lebanon to Bangladesh. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to repatriate our citizens who have registered to return home.
The foreign ministry estimates that between 70,000 and 100,000 of its nationals are working in Lebanon, many as labourers or domestic workers.
Entire population in northern Gaza at ‘imminent risk of death’, Unicef warns
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s ongoing wars on Gaza and Lebanon.
The entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is at “imminent risk” of dying from disease, famine or “ongoing bombardments” by the Israeli military, the head of the United Nations children’s agency (Unicef), Catherine Russell, has warned.
In a statement issued yesterday, Russell said that in the past 48 hours alone, over 50 children had reportedly been killed in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historical refugee camps, where deadly Israeli airstrikes destroyed two residential buildings sheltering hundreds of people.
Israel severely restricted aid to Gaza in October, allowing in only about a third of the humanitarian assistance that entered the previous month.
Russell said:
Civilians and civilian structures, including residential buildings, as well as humanitarian workers and their vehicles, must always be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Displacement or evacuation orders do not permit any party to the conflict to regard all individuals or objects in an area as military targets; nor do they exempt them from their obligations to distinguish between military and civilian objectives, be proportional and take all feasible precautions in attacks.
Yet these principles are being flaunted over and over again, leaving tens of thousands of children killed, injured, and deprived of essential services needed for survival.
Attacks on civilians, including humanitarian workers, and what remains of Gaza’s civilian facilities and infrastructure must stop.
This has already been a deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza.
Attacks on civilians, including humanitarian workers, and what remains of Gaza’s civilian facilities and infrastructure must stop.
My statement👇 https://t.co/TLNYtbN6du
— Catherine Russell (@unicefchief) November 2, 2024
Her comments come as Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported this morning that at least nine Palestinian people were killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting two homes in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya, also in northern Gaza, as well as the southern city of Rafah.
At least five Palestinians have been killed and others injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a house belonging to Warsh al-Agha family in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. pic.twitter.com/mODbwXXOfJ
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) November 3, 2024
The Israeli military launched an intense assault in northern Gaza on 6 October, claiming it was trying to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping. But many civilians have been killed in the attacks, with residents saying Israeli forces besieged hospitals and shelters for displaced people and targeted residential areas.
Residents in the north, under sweeping evacuation orders, say they feel trapped as there is nowhere safe for them to flee to due to the relentless Israeli attacks there.
Here are some of the other key developments:
-
American B-52 bombers have arrived in the Middle East, the US military has confirmed. “B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility,” the military command for the Middle East and surrounding countries said in a post on social media. The US – Israel’s biggest arms supplier and diplomatic ally – announced on Friday evening that it was sending the bombers, fighter and tanker aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the Middle East. “Should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every measure necessary to defend our people,” Pentagon spokesperson Maj Gen Pat Ryder said.
B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. pic.twitter.com/6mDs4n5G2u
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) November 2, 2024
-
The Israeli military said about 10 rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel after air raid sirens were sounded in the Haifa Bay and Galilee areas. Some of the rockets were intercepted while others struck open ground. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
-
The Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes on southern Lebanon overnight, including the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiya in the Nabatieh district, according to reports.
-
Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon, an Israeli military official said on Saturday. The operative appears to be a Lebanese sea captain. Earlier, Lebanese authorities said it was investigating whether Israel was behind the capture of a sea captain who was taken away by a group of armed men who had landed on the coast near the northern town of Batroun on Friday.
-
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has released the following statement on the US’s military support to Israel amid its deadly wars in Gaza and Lebanon: “Ongoing events in Lebanon & Gaza have resulted in the martyrdom of 50,000 ppl in the last year, mostly women & children… The US that claims to be an advocate of human rights, supports & is complicit in those crimes. Plans & weapons used are from the US.”