The Israeli occupation army admitted that five soldiers were wounded by the fire of the Palestinian resistance fire, Wednesday, in the northern Gaza Strip.
An Israeli Channel 12 correspondent reported that a Palestinian fighter emerged from a tunnel opening and fired an anti-tank missile at a force from the Paratroopers Brigade. He then opened fire with a machine gun at the soldiers, wounding four soldiers, two of them seriously.
In another incident, Wednesday, a soldier from the Yahalom Unit was moderately wounded when an explosive device exploded in the central Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian resistance is confronting the occupation’s aggression against the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli army has suffered heavy losses in lives and equipment.
The occupation forces, with American support, continue their aggression against the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in more than 197,000 deaths and injuries, in addition to thousands of missing persons and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons.
Conditions in Gaza have reached an unspeakable level of devastation with children paying the highest price, top UN officials told the Security Council on Wednesday, warning of soaring child deaths, starvation and a shattered health system amid continuing bombardment and displacement.
Tom Fletcher, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, said there was no “vocabulary” left to adequately describe conditions on the ground.
“Food is running out. Those seeking it risk being shot. People are dying trying to feed their families. Field hospitals receive dead bodies, and medical workers hear stories firsthand from the injured – day after day after day,” he said.
Starvation rates among children reached their highest levels in June, with more than 5,800 girls and boys diagnosed as acutely malnourished.
“Last week, amid this hunger crisis, children and women were killed in a strike while waiting for the food supplements to keep them alive.”
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher briefs the Security Council
A classroom full of children, lost every day
UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell told ambassadors that an average of 28 children are killed in Gaza every day – “the equivalent of an entire classroom.”
Over the past 21 months, more than 17,000 children have been killed and 33,000 injured across Gaza.
Many of those children, she said, were struck “as they line up for lifesaving humanitarian aid – further proof that there is no safe place for civilians anywhere in Gaza.”
“Children are not political actors. They do not start conflicts, and they are powerless to stop them. But they suffer greatly, and they wonder why the world has failed them,” she added.
“And make no mistake, we have failed them.”
Critical infrastructure collapse
Gaza’s health system “is shattered,” Mr. Fletcher reported – only 17 of 36 hospitals and 63 of 170 primary health centres are even partially functioning; shortages mean up to five babies share one incubator.
Seventy per cent of essential medicines are out of stock, half of all medical equipment is damaged, pregnant women are giving birth without care, women and girls manage their periods without basic supplies.
Meanwhile, water production capacity has plummeted leaving the entire enclave (95 per cent) facing water insecurity.
“With clean water increasingly difficult to access, children have little choice but to drink contaminated water,” Ms. Russell said, noting that this is increasing the risk of disease outbreaks.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell briefs the Security Council
Aid impeded, fuel at trickle levels
Mr. Fletcher further described the scale of challenges to moving something as simple as a bag of flour into Gaza.
He noted multiple layers of approvals that Israel requires, scanning, re‑loading, multiple handoffs, damaged roads, delays at holding points, insecurity and desperate civilians grabbing supplies off trucks.
Last week – after almost 130 days – some fuel entered Gaza, as Israeli authorities agreed to allow two trucks in per day, five days a week. However, petrol – fuel for ambulances and other critical services – has not been permitted.
Between 19 May and 14 July, just 1,633 aid trucks – about 62 per cent of loads submitted for clearance – entered Gaza, far below the average of 630 daily truckloads moved during the previous ceasefire, Mr. Fletcher said.
Appeals to Israel, Hamas – and the Council
Both officials pressed for immediate, safe, sustained, demilitarised humanitarian access through all available crossings, consistent fuel flows, protection of civilians at distribution points, and restoration of the UN‑led aid pipeline that briefly functioned during earlier pauses in fighting.
They also reiterated the UN’s call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held in Gaza and called on all parties – including Hamas and other armed groups – to respect international humanitarian law.
Mr. Fletcher asked the Security Council to assess whether Israel, as the occupying power, is meeting its obligations to ensure food and medical supplies reach civilians.
“We hold all parties to the standards of international law in this conflict. We don’t have to choose – and in fact, we must not choose – between demanding the end to the starvation of civilians in Gaza and demanding the unconditional release of all the hostages,” he said.
“We must reject antisemitism – we must fight it with every fibre of our DNA. But we must also hold Israel to the same principles and laws as all other States.”
Yemen’s Houthi group announced Wednesday it targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, Eilat port and a military site in the Negev region in a series of coordinated missile and drone attacks.
“The Houthi missile force launched a ballistic missile of the Zulfiqar type at Lod Airport (Ben Gurion) in the Tel Aviv area,” Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a prerecorded statement.
He added that the strike forced “occupying Zionist settlers into shelters and halted airport operations.”
Saree said the group also conducted operations using drones. Two drones targeted an Israeli military site in the Negev region, while others were aimed at Ben Gurion Airport and the port of Eilat according to Anadolu.
Earlier, the Israeli army said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, triggering air raid sirens in several southern areas. The army did not mention any drone activity in its statement.
Air raid sirens sounded across multiple towns and settlements in the Negev and Dead Sea areas, according to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the port of Eilat will suspend operations starting Sunday due to financial distress, largely attributed to a sharp decline in revenue caused by the ongoing Houthi naval blockade in the Red Sea.
According to the report, the port has accumulated roughly 10 million shekels ($2.9 million) in debt, primarily due to unpaid municipal taxes. The network said ships that previously docked at Eilat have diverted to Ashdod and Haifa ports on the Mediterranean, citing “aggressive Houthi activity in the Red Sea.”
The Houthis have intensified missile and drone strikes on Israel since Israeli forces resumed their attacks on the Gaza Strip in March after two months of a shaky ceasefire.
Since November 2023, the group has also targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea in support of Palestinians in Gaza, where nearly 58,900 people have been killed in an Israeli onslaught.
The number of Israeli soldier committing suicide after serving in Gaza is going up at alarming rates. Just last Thursday a soldier soldier took a gun to his head and fired point-blank.
The incident was at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel. The soldier had just returned from fighting in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the soldier was a member of the notorious Golani Brigade that has been fighting in Gaza soon after 7 October, 2023 and who was being questioned by the Israeli military police for bloody incidents carried out in Gaza.
He had come to the military base for a rest from the fighting but soon found out the military police were waiting for him according to Haaretz.
Its rare to investigate soldiers committing atrocities in Gaza but a probe was opened against him a month ago where it was reported that his commanders decided to confiscate his weapon.
On the night of the incident shooting he slowly took the gun of his friend who was his asleep and pulled the trigger on himself.
Its understood, he was suffering from a sever psychological depression since his close friend was killed in a bomb explosion in Gaza last month.
The number of Israeli soldiers committing suicide have shot up since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
On Sunday, a reserve soldier killed himself in a forest near the northern city of Safed due to psychological problems from the Gaza war.
About 21 soldiers took away their lives in 2024 according the Israel Hayom newspaper. This is while Haaretz said that 42 soldiers committed suicide since the start of the Israeli genocide.
Last week another Israeli soldier took away his life just after celebrating his 24th birthday having served in the wars on Gaza and Lebanon.
“He told me he saw horrors. He couldn’t stand the pain anymore,” the mother of soldier Daniel Edri told Walla News.
“He told me that he saw horrors, and said to me: Mom, I smell the smell of the bodies and I see the bodies all the time,” his mother recalled. He was discharged from the army five months ago and was involved in transporting the bodies of dead Israeli soldiers.
His life stopped after he set himself on fire inside his car outside an Israeli settlement near the Palestinian town of Safad, pointing out that he was mentally disturbed.
Many have long reported that there is a clear mental health crisis in the Israeli army with the highest toll in 13 years of soldiers taking away their lives
Israel killed one more Palestinian journalist, Sunday, in a mass airstrike on Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in southeastern Gaza City.
The strike killed two Palestinians, including journalist Fadi Khalifa, according to medical sources in Gaza.
Khalifa’s death hikes the number of journalists killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s military campaign on Oct. 7, 2023 to 230 according to data by the Gaza Government Media Office.
Israel repeatedly targets journalists in a bid to stop coverage of the genocide, now going to nearly two years. On Thursday, the office said journalist Ahmad Salamah Abu Aisha lost his life after being directly hit in an Israeli drone attack in front of his home in the Sawarha area, west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
The office explained that Abu Aisha was killed as a result of a direct attack by Israeli drones in front of his home in the Al-Sawarah area, west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
In a Media Office statement condemned “in strongest terms” the occupation’s systematic targeting and assassination of Palestinian journalists, calling on the International Federation of Journalists, the Federation of Arab Journalists, and all journalistic organizations around the world to condemn these crimes.
The statement also held the Israeli occupation, along with the US administration and countries involved in supporting the aggression, such as Britain, Germany, and France, fully responsible for the continued killing of journalists and media professionals.
Since 7 October, 2023, the occupation forces, with full American support, continued to commit genocidal crimes in Gaza, leaving approximately 195,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing, in addition to hundreds of thousands displaced.
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