Hundreds of injured Palestinians and foreigners were evacuated from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, November 1. This first evacuation operation allowed 76 wounded Palestinians and 335 foreigners and dual nationals, according to an Egyptian official, to reach Egypt.

The injured were the first to pass through the Rafah border post, the only possible opening from the Gaza Strip to the world, before the evacuation of dual nationals and foreigners, including Americans, Italians, French, Australians and Austrians.

Egyptian televisions broadcast images of women, children and elderly men getting off buses. Rescue workers carried the injured on stretchers to ambulances. American President Joe Biden assured that it was thanks to the “leading role” of the United States, with help in particular from Qatar, that these evacuations were possible.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) highlighted that “more than 20,000 injured remain in Gaza, with limited access to health care.” In a press release published in the evening, the NGO announced that all members of its international staff had left the Palestinian enclave, twenty-two people in total. She said a new international team was ready to enter the territory “as soon as the situation allows.”

“Attention must not be diverted from the even greater needs” of thousands of patients “whose health is too precarious to be evacuated,” warned the World Health Organization (WHO).

Bombing in Jabaliya camp

While the war triggered by the Hamas attack in Israel entered its twenty-seventh day on Thursday, a new Israeli bombardment on Wednesday caused “dozens” of deaths, according to the Palestinian Islamist movement, in the camp. from Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. This assessment cannot be verified immediately.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Antonio Guterres, said he was “appalled” by the strikes on this very densely populated camp, the largest in the territory, where 116,000 refugees live. The bombing was described as a new “atrocity” by the head of UN humanitarian operations, Martin Griffiths. For the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, these strikes could constitute “war crimes”, “given the high number of civilian victims and the scale of the destruction”.

Hamas has the choice between “dying or surrendering unconditionally,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday. The Jewish state’s army claimed to have eliminated the head of Hamas’s anti-tank unit, Muhammad Atzar, on Wednesday.

The Gaza Strip, ruled since 2007 by Hamas, has been subjected since October 9 by Israel to a “complete siege” which deprives its population of deliveries of water, food and electricity. The humanitarian situation is considered catastrophic for its 2.4 million inhabitants.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-controlled territory said that sixteen hospitals were no longer operational, out of the thirty-five in the territory. Mohammed Abu Selmeya, the director of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the enclave, issued a “final call”, warning that the main generator was in danger of shutting down due to lack of fuel. “If this generator stops, the next announcement will be the death of babies in incubators, the death of patients on ventilators, in intensive care and in operating rooms,” he said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said more than 70 of its staff had been killed since October 7, “often with their families.”

Sixty-one trucks carrying medicine and food arrived in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, after fifty-nine the day before, according to Israeli authorities. But the UN insists on the need for much more massive aid.

New drone attack

In the Gaza Strip, nearly 8,800 people, including 3,648 children, have been killed since October 7 in Israeli bombardments, according to Hamas. More than 2,000 people are missing under the rubble, according to the same source.

According to Israeli authorities, at least 1,400 people have been killed in Israel since the start of the war, the majority civilians and most of them on the day of the Hamas attack, of a scale and violence not seen since the creation of the Hebrew state in 1948.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Wednesday that the region would not experience stability if the Palestinians did not obtain their “independence”.

After a first phase of response focused on massive bombings, Israel has also undertaken, since October 27, to send tanks and soldiers to the north of the Gaza Strip, where fighting is taking place amid the ruins. , to Hamas fighters. The Israeli army has announced the deaths of 331 of its soldiers since the start of the war.

Sirens alerting Israelis of imminent rocket attacks sound regularly. Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed to have targeted the Jewish state on Wednesday with a new drone attack.

Turkey and Iran, for their part, called for the convening of a major international conference. The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, is due to travel to Israel on Friday, then to Jordan.