- Jordan cancels summit with US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi after deadly Israeli strike at a Gaza hospital. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas earlier withdrew from the meeting.
- UN chief calls for “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” as world leaders condemn hospital attack and spontaneous protests erupt across the Middle East and elsewhere.
- More than 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack inside Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people.
ISRAELI air raids continue to hit Gaza early on Wednesday, just hours after a deadly strike killed over 500 people at al-Ahli Hospital, according to a resident in the Palestinian territory.
“The people are living in fear and anxiety. Bombings are everywhere,” Hamza Ibrahim said in an interview with Al Jazeera.
“I could hear the bombing just outside my house,” he said, adding that the situation “is getting worse by the day”.
“Even the safe places have been targeted.”
Just in the last hour, the interior ministry in Gaza reported that Israeli strikes killed over 37 people in two areas of the northern Jabalia refugee camp.
Doctor tells world leaders to show some morals after hospital bombings
Prominent Palestinian doctor Khamis Elessi spoke to Al Jazeera after the bombing of the hospital in Gaza.
“We heard this huge explosion that rocked all of the Gaza Strip,” he said, before urging Arab and world leaders to stop the onslaught in Gaza.
UN chief urges ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’
Following his earlier comments in which he condemned the hospital attack, Antonio Guterres has just now called for an “immediate” ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.
“I call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to … ease the epic human suffering we are witnessing,” the UN chief told a forum of the Belt and Road infrastructure project in China’s capital, Beijing.
Biden ‘between a rock and a hard place’ on visit to Israel
Twenty-four hours ago, this was an entirely different trip for Joe Biden, and I bet he wished he did it before because now it puts him between a rock and a hard place.
He is going there after having fully committed US support to Israel at a time when, here in the US, it was widely perceived as Israel defending itself against a brutal attack by Hamas. And now it is Israel accused of targeting civilians in this hospital explosion, which its leaders have denied.
John Kirby, the spokesperson of the White House, on the trip there briefed reporters and said Biden is going to come with some tough questions for his ally Benjamin Netanyahu.
He was scheduled to talk with the Israeli prime minister, the families of those who were killed, and those who were taken captive by Hamas.
But he now has to do a balancing act and show that the US cares about Palestinian civilians in this instance, as well and get his national security team looking independently into what exactly happened there.
Hospital bombing raises questions over Israel-Arab ‘normalisation’
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, three countries that have all forged formal ties Israel, have condemned the bombing of al-Ahli hospital and blamed Israel for the attack, effectively dismissing Israeli claims that the facility was hit by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket.
Saudi Arabia also strongly condemned the attack, calling it a “heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupation forces”.
The Biden administration has been pushing for so-called normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel as a policy priority in the region.
“The regional dynamic is taking a sharp downward turn tonight & US policy crumbling into the sand,” US analyst Charles Lister wrote on X.
Protests erupt across the Middle East and around the world
Angry protests have erupted across the Middle East and in major cities around the world over a deadly Israeli strike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital that killed more than 500 people. The deadly incident unleased condemnations around the world and derailed US President Joe Biden’s diplomatic efforts in the region.
PIJ calls for protests at Israeli embassies, countries supporting Israel
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has called for demonstrations at Israeli embassies around the world and the embassies of countries supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and the massacre of Palestinian people.
“Our message to our Arab and Islamic peoples and to the free people of the world: Everyone has the duty to participate in mass demonstrations, not to leave the streets, and to confront the occupation embassies and the countries that support it,” a PIJ spokesperson said on social media.
“This is the minimum, and it is a duty and there is no excuse for anyone who neglects it,” the spokesman said.
c. Al Jazeera
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Cover photo: Ted Regencia, Lyndal Rowlands, Virginia Pietromarchi and Mersiha Gadzo | Al Jazeera
