11 people have been killed by an Israeli strike near a hospital in Rafah
The first aid shipment over the Oct. 7 attack: Jordan’s first airdropped shipments of food over the southern border is not well-regulated by the U.N.
“We have been calling for more crossing openings, more opening hours, more capacity to check trucks, and not have trucks being off and unloaded multiple times,” Soeripto said. These are a few straightforward ways to make this operation easier and more effective. None of this have been taken up yet.
The deputy permanent representative of Israel to the UN Security Council said his government would like to improve access at the Rafah border crossing and another land crossing in Israel.
Israel has said the lack of aid is due to U.N. inefficiency. Israel claims that a dozen employees of the UN agency for Palestine, UNRWA, participated in the Oct. 7 attack. Many donors, including the United States, were deterred from giving much-needed funding by the claim. The European Commission restored funding after welcoming an UNRWA investigation into the allegations.
Aid agencies are ready to provide more supplies to Gaza, but it is not possible to get the supplies in.
This situation was made worse by the number of decisions taken by Israeli authorities while they were engaged in this war: a constant bombing campaign, a complete siege imposed on the enclave, bureaucratic hurdles and lack of security mechanisms to guarantee safe food distribution from southern to northern Gaza.
Gaza is an anomaly — a densely populated territory with borders under foreign military control. famine has descended on a population already weakened by five months of war, because Israel has refused to allow in more aid.
On Thursday, Jordan dropped seven tons of supplies over northern Gaza — the first aid shipment to the area in about a month. The pallets were loaded with cardboard boxes containing rice, flour, sugar, tea and milk, along with sanitary napkins.
A photographer was prevented from photographing a flag of another nation on a pallet because it was one of two Arab nations that did not want their participation in the airdroppeds publicized. The cargo plane that was going to be used in an air strike was on the tarmac before it developed mechanical problems.
Airdrops — expensive, cumbersome and inefficient — are considered by the aid community the last resort of food delivery. During the war in Gaza, Jordan hopes to save some lives by dropping tons of food.
The cargo planes are waiting for the Jordanian military personnel to load the containers onto the planes at the air base near Zarka. The meals, similar to military meals-ready-to-eat for a population with little fuel for cooking, featured Arab dishes including mansaf, Jordan’s national dish made of lamb, dried yogurt and rice.
There wasn’t easy to see where the parachute-equipped food flew over northern Gaza. The Israeli approval for the meticulously planned airdrops is still subject to change. The wind blew one of the pallets into Israel from northern Gaza, Jordan’s military said.
Israel has denied entry to foreign journalists to the Gaza Strip since the start of the war. That, along with disrupting phone and internet service, makes it extremely difficult to confirm what is happening on the ground. The U.N. reports that 122 local journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October.
The U.K. foreign secretary, David Cameron, said in a statement Friday that in February only half the number of trucks crossed into Gaza as did in January, terming it “unacceptable.”
She said one Save the Children staffer in a maternity ward in Gaza reported that doctors were sending premature infants home to die because they did not have incubators to treat them. At least six children have died since the beginning of the year because of their lack of food or nutrition, according to aid groups.
Gaza’s desperate need for food: When Israeli soldiers opened fire on Gaza on Thursday killed 30,000 civilians, according to a Palestinian journalist
The Israeli military said it must search every vehicle for any weapons that could be used by Hamas in the invasion of Gaza. In response to the attack, Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 30,000 civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
On Friday, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza posted on X (formerly Twitter) that thousands of Palestinians desperate for food gathered at the same spot where civilians were killed on Thursday.
Aid groups say that Israel presents many obstacles to food shipments through the Rafah crossing, which has slowed the flow of aid.
The crowd, desperate for food, dispersed when a tank appeared. But after it retreated they came back and stormed the trucks. He said that is when Israeli soldiers opened fire. Israel said it was using tanks to protect the convoy of private contractors in an aid delivery effort it was overseeing.
Like many in Gaza, Salem spends much of his day walking miles trying to find food for his three children, his wife and his mother. Even for those with money, there is no food available to buy.
With most of Gaza’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, there are few ambulances and even fewer hospitals, all trying to operate without electricity or basic medical supplies. The casualties were taken to the hospital in a horse-drawn cart.
Israel acknowledges that it opened fire in what it said was self-defense but said most of the dead were killed after being run over by the trucks or trampled in a stampede.
“I was standing by a truck when I got hit by a bullet in my leg,” said Ahmed al-Haj Salem, who was being treated at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. I fell to the ground after a shot hit my hand.
Source: Aboard Jordan’s aid airdrop over Gaza, a last resort for relief to Palestinians there
On-the-ground and airborne trauma deaths during Israel’s war in Gaza for next six months: Evidence from the Holocaust in Dresden and London
FLYING OVER NORTHERN GAZA STRIP — Seventeen-thousand feet in the air, Jordanian air force personnel are unhooking the chains to let pallets of wrapped cardboard boxes attached to parachutes roll out the cargo door.
Several data experts who were not involved in the research applauded the authors. “This is a very serious effort, they’re trying their best to get it as right as they possibly can,” says Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway, University of London and chair of Every Casualty Counts, a nongovernment group that quantifies the human cost of war. “But it’s extremely complicated, and rests on assumption after assumption after assumption,” he says. It can’t be otherwise due to what they’re trying to accomplish.
By combining on-the-ground data from Gaza with knowledge from past wars, the researchers projected how many additional lives would be lost over the next six months under three conflict scenarios: immediate and permanent ceasefire, status quo and escalation.
During the 7-week long Israel’s war in Gaza, the researchers analyzed data from the ground and airborne phases of the conflict and used injury data from Gaza to calculate the number and severity of wounds in the population. If someone is wounded, their access to health care is a factor.
They took average casualties during the first six months of the war and then spun them into larger numbers over the next six months. The worst month of the conflict so far was October 11 through November 10, when more than 11,000 people died.
He says that it might involve a lot of bombing in densely populated areas or that Israeli forces could flood the tunnels with water. “We don’t actually know what any of those scenarios will mean in terms of the armed groups’ actions.”
If the war escalates, excess deaths could climb to between 74,290 and 85,750. (The higher number in each range includes deaths from possible outbreaks of infectious disease).
The scope of these projections can be seen by looking at estimated trauma deaths from two of history’s most devastating bombing campaigns during World War II, with Allied bombs killing some 25,000 over two days in Dresden and Nazi attacks taking approximately 40,000 lives in London over eight months.
Source: ‘Excess deaths’ in Gaza for next 6 months projected in first-of-its-kind effort
The Gaza Conflict: A Status Report for the First Six Months Projected in First-Of-ITS-kind Effort
This initial report is very much a first draft. Spiegel, Igusa and colleagues plan to release updated projections over the next several months, refining their assumptions based on experience and incorporating new data, including measures of mental health.
“I hope we have made it clear that there is going to be a lot of dead if there is a cessation of hostilities,” says Spiegel, acknowledging the importance of getting enough water, food and medical attention as soon as possible. Right now, blockades, continued assaults and damaged roads are preventing that aid from reaching those who need it.
“These very quantitative, evidence-based efforts are valuable,” in forcing politicians and humanitarian agencies to confront the human cost of continued fighting, says Asi. “But that’s just the first step. They have to be coupled with advocacy and political action.”
Since the conflict began, wrenching images and videos of the suffering in Gaza have made the conflict real to many around the world, spurring some advocacy and political action. The fighting is going on. “It is not known if these numbers push political actors towards a lasting ceasefire,” says Asi.
Source: ‘Excess deaths’ in Gaza for next 6 months projected in first-of-its-kind effort
Counting deaths in Gaza for next six months projected in first-of-its-kind effort, with an application to disease outbreaks in Israel
Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy. He’s written for NPR, Nature News, and the Dallas Morning News and has been a staff writer at Grid and Science News. He holds a Master’s degree in evolutionary biology from Cornell University. Follow him on X @evolambert or on bluesky @jonlambert.bsky.social.
To estimate the possible toll of an outbreak, the team combined existing data on baseline health status, malnutrition, sanitation and vaccination rates with models of infectious disease spread. Such outbreaks would be especially hard on children, the researchers say, who are more vulnerable to infections, especially when they’re malnourished. More than half a million people are “facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation,” according to the United Nations.
Infectious disease outbreaks, like cholera or COVID, are common in conflict zones, as overcrowding in shelters and poor sanitation can stoke the spread of pathogens. It’s hard to estimate when the outbreaks might occur, which is why the team included projections without epidemics.
Casualties go uncounted as fighting rages on, leaving an imperfect tally of deaths and injuries. It can take months or even years for indirect effects of conflict, such as missed cancer treatments due to hospital bombings or disease outbreaks in refugee camp, to become apparent.
Given those assumptions, the researchers project that an additional 3,250 people will die from traumatic injuries after fighting stops. The rest of the 6,550 to 11,580 deaths post-ceasefire come from nonviolent causes.
“We have to think about how the health-care system is changing over time,” says Spiegel. The situation right now is dire, according to many of the trauma doctors the researchers consulted for the study. “If hospitals are functioning, a person with a head or chest wound might survive. It is probable that he or she will not.
Source: ‘Excess deaths’ in Gaza for next 6 months projected in first-of-its-kind effort
Putting it all together: Projecting what will happen in the next war and how to deal with the consequences for the environment, human rights and human rights
Tak Igusa, a civil engineer at the school, says that they wanted to create scenarios that were realistic and then project what might happen.
Ball says that he has spent his career trying to calculate the cost of war. “I’m never projecting tomorrow’s deaths, but I can imagine a whole new field coming from this [analysis]. We’re always going to be doing this from here forward.”
The experts agree. “It’s a rigorous way of talking about the human cost of human decisions,” says Patrick Ball, director of research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a nonprofit organization. While he stresses that the projections are speculative, that kind of speculation can be “immensely useful” in clarifying the potential costs of military action, which could both hold actors to account and help guide humanitarian action, he said.
Even if the bombing is stopped tomorrow, people will still die because of the loss of their shelter, food and access to water, she says. Even if the numbers are not perfect, putting this all together makes us confront the true toll on the population there. We cannot say that we did not anticipate this.”
Yara Asi is a public health expert at the University of Central Florida and she was not involved in the analysis. But she says it’s an innovative and valuable effort.
Researchers usually wait until the war is over to reconstruct the data and figure out what happened, because of the chaos of war.
Israeli strike on the Emirati maternity hospital: “A truce and protection for health care workers and civilians in Gaza,” according to the United Nations Population Fund
At least 11 people, including children, were killed and dozens more were injured when an Israeli strike hit a hospital in southern Gaza on Saturday.
The health ministry said at least two health care workers including a paramedic were killed during the strike near the Emirati maternity hospital.
Photos taken by news agencies showed colleagues of the paramedic, whom the health ministry identified as Abdul Fattah Abu Marai, taking his body to the nearby Kuwaiti hospital, as well as injured children lying on stretchers, as other children looked on and cried.
In the past, the Israeli military had said Rafah would be a safe zone for civilians and now many of the population are living in tents in and around the city.
But airstrikes on Rafah have continued even as the number of people sheltering there has swelled to around 1.5 million. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed that his forces will invade the city whether or not a temporary cease-fire deal is reached, despite dire warnings from humanitarian groups and many of Israel’s allies that any military operation in Rafah would have catastrophic consequences for civilians.
The leader of the World Health Organization said on his social media that Saturday’s strike was outrageous, and called for a truce and protection of health care workers and civilians.
The victims of the strike were sheltering near the Emirati maternity hospital, one of the last hospitals still functioning in Gaza. Despite having only five beds remaining for women giving birth, the hospital is managing more than half of the estimated 180 births happening daily in the enclave, said Dominic Allen, the State of Palestine representative for the United Nations Population Fund, a sexual and reproductive health agency known as U.N.F.P.A.
