Gaza [Palestine], November 10: Zionist entity has agreed to begin daily four-hour military pauses in northern Gaza to allow people in the area to flee the war, the White House said on Thursday. "Zionist entity will begin to implement four-hour pauses in areas of northern Gaza each day, with an announcement to be made three hours beforehand," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Meanwhile, Zionist air strikes pounded Gaza City on Thursday as soldiers battled street-by-street and tens of thousands of Palestinians desperate for safety fled their homes southwards in the besieged territory. After more than a month of intense bombardment, hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in a "dire humanitarian situation" in urban battle zones without enough food and water, the United Nations said. Broken palm trees, distorted road signs and twisted lampposts marked the ruins of what was once north Gaza's main arterial route, an AFP journalist saw while embedded with Zionist entity soldiers. Zionist entity flags were flying over buildings at beach resorts in northern Gaza and there was little sign of any human presence amid the destruction.
The intense combat and the densely-populated coastal territory being effectively sealed off have led to increasingly dire conditions for civilians. Tom Potokar, chief surgeon at the International Committee of the Red Cross, described the scene at the European hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza as "catastrophic". "In the last 24 hours, I've seen three patients with maggots in their wounds," Potokar told AFP. A rare delivery of emergency medical supplies reached Gaza City's main Al-Shifa hospital on Wednesday, just the second since the war began, the UN and World Health Organization said, warning it "far from sufficient to respond to the immense needs".
According to a source close to Hamas, talks are underway for the release of 12 hostages, including six Americans, in return for a three-day ceasefire. US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Washington "have a way to communicate with Hamas", but that giving details could jeopardize the process.
France hosted a conference on Thursday on humanitarian aid for Gaza calling for a "humanitarian pause" so countries can "work towards a ceasefire". "In the immediate term, we need to work on protecting civilians. To do that, we need a humanitarian pause very quickly and we must work towards a ceasefire," President Emmanuel Macron told delegates in Paris.
Zionist entity has stayed away from the talks on aid for civilians in the enclave of 2.4 million people, where the Hamas-run health ministry said Thursday Zionist entity's military campaign has killed more than 10,800 people, many of them children, and wounded almost 27,000 more.
Thursday's aid conference was put together in a hurry on the sidelines of the annual Paris Peace Forum on November 10-11. Although representatives from many European countries, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority and a slew of aid groups joined, no heads of government from the Arab world attended.
Egypt's Foreign Minister SamehShoukry accused Zionist entity of "violations of international humanitarian law". "How many Palestinians must die for this war to stop? Is it enough to kill six children and four women every hour?" Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh asked delegates, urging them to "end the double standard" he said existed between Palestinian and Zionist entity casualties.
The UN estimates that $1.2 billion in aid will be needed for the populations of Gaza and the West Bank from now until the end of the year. "We don't know what 'humanitarian pauses' would really mean," said Isabelle Dufourny, president of the French section of Doctors Without Borders (MSF). "If we only get one or two days of truce, it's not enough. We can't set up medical aid on a battlefield," she added.
Independent UN expert BalakrishnanRajagopal said on Wednesday that Zionist entity's widespread and systematic bombardment of housing and civilian infrastructure in Gaza was a "war crime", as were indiscriminate Hamas rocket attacks that hit Zionist entity dwellings. Zionist entity has for now remained firm in keeping up its offensive, with the stated objective of destroying Hamas-which has governed Gaza since 2007. As the war intensifies, discussions on the possible future of Gaza once the conflict ends have also grown, after Netanyahu this week said that Zionist entity would assume "overall security" of the territory.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirmed the figure, and warned that conditions were "dire" in battle zones north of the central Wadi Gaza district.
"Hundreds of thousands of people remaining north of Wadi Gaza, including IDPs (internally displaced people), are facing a dire humanitarian situation and are struggling to secure the minimum amounts of water and food to survive." In the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, a weeping father cradled the body of his two-year-old son Mohammed Abu Qamar, who died after an air strike.
"Please don't put him in the morgue, let me take him home and I will bury him tomorrow", his father Nidal said, as his wife screamed in grief alongside him. UN rights chief Volker Turk condemned Zionist entity over its bombardment and its orders for to Gazans to flee. "The collective punishment by Zionist entity of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians," he told reporters at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the only route out of Gaza not controlled by Zionist entity.
Efforts continue to resume the crossing into Egypt of wounded Palestinians and dual nationals after departures were stalled Wednesday, with Hamas blaming Zionist entity for a failure to approve the list of injured to leave. More than 100 trucks carrying aid crossed into Gaza from Egypt on Wednesday, OCHA said, taking the total to 756 since fighting began last month, fewer than what would normally have entered Gaza in just two days before the war. "The aid getting through is a trickle," Turk said.
Source: Kuwait Times