Demands for mass grave investigation grow

Let’s catch you up on the latest developments.

• Gaza’s health ministry warned severe infections are rapidly spreading in the enclave.
• Residents of northern Gaza are having to flee again as Israel intensifies attacks there.
• Israel’s military plans to transfer two combat brigades from northern Israel to carry out operations in Gaza.
• The UN and the EU joined calls for a probe into mass graves at hospitals in Gaza.
• “We are getting closer by the day to a famine situation,” said the Geneva director of the World Food Programme (WFP), Gian Carlo Cirri.
• Iran and Pakistan call on the UNSC to take action against Israel.
• Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian woman accused of a stabbing attack near the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba, close to Hebron in the occupied West Bank, according to Israeli media reports.
  

  Hepatitis, meningitis spreading in Gaza: Health Ministry

  Gaza’s Health Ministry warns that severe infections are rapidly spreading in the enclave because of unsanitary conditions, including the overflow of sewage into the streets and a lack of drinking water.

  The ministry specifically highlighted an alarming rise in cases of hepatitis and meningitis. It appealed for urgent support from “all relevant national, international and humanitarian institutions”.

  Doctors and aid workers have warned of epidemics, given the dire humanitarian situation and with the besieged enclave’s health system on its knees.

  Residents of northern Gaza flee again as Israel intensifies attacks

  Palestinian civilians are fleeing their homes again in northern Gaza.

  Israeli shelling is focused for a second day on Beit Lahiya where the Israeli military ordered four neighbourhoods to evacuate, warning residents they’re in a “dangerous combat zone”.

  People in the suburbs of Gaza City also reported heavy shelling.

  Amjad Aleway, an emergency doctor in Gaza City, speaking in the ruins of al-Shifa Hospital, said: “The number of casualties is overwhelming, and we lack sufficient operating theatres to address them.”

  ‘There are no universities left in Gaza’

  US universities are doling out more heavy-handed discipline to pro-Palestininan protesters on campus, citing “safety concerns”, as some Jewish students say criticism of Israel has veered into anti-Semitism.

  Heated debates and exchanges of insults between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators have occurred, particularly on the streets around Columbia University in New York City.

  “There are no universities left in Gaza so we chose to reclaim our university for the people of Palestine,” said Soph Askanase, a Jewish student at Columbia who was arrested and suspended for protesting.

  “Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism – in particular racism against Arabs and Palestinians – are all cut from the same cloth.”

  Other students blamed university administrators for failing to protect their right to protest and stand up for human rights. “As a Palestinian student, I too did not feel safe for the past six months, and that was as a direct result of Columbia’s one-sided statements and inaction,” Mahmoud Khalil said.

  Nepal president urges Qatar emir’s help in releasing captive held in Gaza

  Ram Chandra Poudel has asked Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who is on a two-day visit to the South Asian country, to help release a Nepali student taken captive in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on October 7.

  Qatar has played a key mediator role during Israel’s war on Gaza, helping to negotiate a brief truce that led to the release of dozens of captives and Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

  Sheikh Tamim said he would do everything possible to help release Bipin Joshi, the Nepali president’s press adviser, Kiran Pokharel, told the Associated Press news agency.

  Joshi was among 17 Nepali students studying agriculture in Alumim kibbutz, which is near the Gaza Strip, when the attack happened. Ten of the students were killed, six were injured, while Joshi was taken as a captive to Gaza.

  There has been no information about his whereabouts, but Nepali officials believe he is still alive.

  Israeli army calls up 2 brigades from northern Israel to Gaza

  Israel’s military plans to transfer two combat brigades from northern Israel to carry out operations in Gaza.

  The army said in a statement that the 2nd Reserve Brigade of the 146th Division and the 679th Reserve Brigade of the 210th Division will be deployed from along Lebanon’s border in northern Israel to the Gaza Strip.

  An Israeli infantry brigade typically consists of 2,000 to 5,000 soldiers.

  The statement didn’t clarify the nature of the operations forthcoming in Gaza, but the transfers come amid threats of a ground offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians are sheltering.

  Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said clearing Rafah of what his government says are four Hamas battalions is necessary for “total victory”.

  EU joins calls for probe into mass graves at Gaza hospitals

  The European Union wants an independent investigation into mass graves uncovered at Gaza’s Nasser and al-Shifa medical facilities.

  “This is something that forces us to call for an independent investigation of all the suspicions and all the circumstances, because indeed it creates the impression that there might have been violations of international human rights committed,” EU spokesman Peter Stano said.

  Earlier, the UN also demanded a transparent inquiry into the mass graves, where Palestinian civil defence crew say they found more than 300 bodies. Any investigation, according to the UN, would need to involve international investigators “given the prevailing climate of impunity”.

  UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said some of the bodies at Nasser Hospital were allegedly “found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes”.