Gaza is ‘hell on earth’ with doctors fainting from hunger, UN says, as 1,000 people estimated to have been killed seeking food – Israel-Gaza war live | Israel

Amnesty International on Tuesday called for a war crimes investigation into Israel’s deadly air attack on Tehran’s Evin prison during last month’s 12-day war.

The strike, confirmed by Israel, killed 79 people, according to a provisional tally by Iranian authorities.

It also destroyed part of the administrative building in Evin, a large, heavily fortified complex in the north of Tehran, which rights groups say holds political prisoners and foreign nationals.

Amnesty International, an international non-governmental organisation that campaigns to protect human rights, said in a statement that the Israeli attack “deliberate” and “a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.

The airstrikes should therefore be “criminally investigated as war crimes”, it said.

Amnesty said:

The Israeli military carried out multiple air strikes on Evin prison, killing and injuring scores of civilians and causing extensive damage and destruction in at least six locations across the prison complex.

The organisation based its assessment on what it said were verified video footage, satellite images and witness statements.

There was nothing to suggest that Evin prison could justifiably be seen as a “legal military objective”, it said.

The victims of the 23 June attack on the prison included administrative staff, guards, prisoners and visiting relatives, as well as people living nearby.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 prisoners were being held at the time in the prison.

The head of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency said on Tuesday that its staff members as well as doctors and humanitarian workers are fainting on duty due to hunger and exhaustion, Reuters reports.

Unrwa commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement, shared by his spokesperson at a press briefing in Geneva:

Caretakers, including UNRWA colleagues in Gaza, are also in need of care now, doctors, nurses, journalists, humanitarians, among them, UNRWA staff are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties.

Lazzarini described the situation in Gaza as “hell on earth”, adding that nowhere was safe.

The Unrwa estimates that 1,000 starving people have been reported killed while seeking food aid since the end of May.

After talks to extend a six-week ceasefire broke down, Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza on 2 March, allowing nothing in until trucks were again permitted at a trickle in late May.

In a post on X on Monday, Unrwa said that shortages in the Palestinian territory had caused food prices to increase by 40 times, while the aid stockpiled in its warehouses outside Gaza could feed “the entire population for over three months.”

Nick Maynard

Prof Nick Maynard is a consultant surgeon at Oxford university hospital who has been travelling regularly to Gaza for 15 years. He is currently volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) at Nasser hospital in Gaza.

I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase “skin and bones” doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her. We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.

This is my third time in Gaza since December 2023 as a volunteer surgeon with Medical Aid for Palestinians. I experienced mass casualty events and raised the alarm about malnutrition back in January 2024. But nothing has prepared me for the sheer horror I’m witnessing now: the weaponisation of starvation against an entire population.

The malnutrition crisis has become catastrophic since my last visit. Every day I watch patients deteriorate and die, not from their injuries, but because they are too malnourished to survive surgery. The surgical repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, then they die. It is happening repeatedly, and it is heartbreaking to watch. Four babies have died in the last few weeks in this hospital – not from bombs or bullets, but from starvation.

Families and staff do their best to try to bring in what they can, but there simply isn’t enough food available in Gaza. For infants, we have virtually no baby formula. Children are being given 10% dextrose (sugar water), which has no nutritional value, and often their mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed. When an international colleague tried to bring baby formula into Gaza, Israeli authorities confiscated it.

You can read more of Nick Maynard’s piece here: I’m witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s children – why is the world letting it happen?

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed 15 people in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, as the military expanded ground operations to the central city of Deir al-Balah, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes on the al-Shati camp west of Gaza City killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.

Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during 21 months of conflict and the al-Shati camp, on the Mediterranean coast, hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.

Bassal said two more people were killed in Deir al-Balah, where the Israeli army said it would expand its ground operations, having ordered the evacuation of much of the area.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the area, which until now had been considered relatively safe. About 30,000 were living in displacement sites.

AFP footage from central Gaza showed a large plume of smoke rising over Deir al-Balah on Tuesday while a surveillance drone was heard buzzing overhead.

Ocha said nearly 88% of the entire Gaza Strip was now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones, forcing the population of 2.4 million into an ever-shrinking space.

At least 1,062 people died in Iran in its 12-day war with Israel last month, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

There were 102 women and 38 children among the dead. The previous official death toll was 935.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the Israeli military attacked its staff residence and main warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Monday, compromising its operations in Gaza.

The WHO said its staff residence was attacked three times, with airstrikes causing a fire and extensive damage, and endangering staff and their families, including children.

On Monday, Israeli tanks for the first time pushed into southern and eastern districts of Deir al-Balah, an area where Israeli sources said the military believes hostages may be held. Tank shelling in the area hit houses and mosques, killing at least three Palestinians and wounding several others, local medics said.

The WHO said:

Israeli military entered the premises, forcing women and children to evacuate on foot toward al-Mawasi amid active conflict. Male staff and family members were handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot, and screened at gunpoint.

Two WHO staff and two family members were detained, it said in a post on X. It said three were later released, while one staff member remained in detention. Its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “WHO demands the immediate release of the detained staff and protection of all its staff.”

Deir al-Balah is packed with Palestinians displaced during more than 21 months of war in Gaza, hundreds of whom fled west or south after Israel issued an evacuation order, saying it sought to destroy infrastructure and the capabilities of the militant group Hamas.

But the area is also the main hub for humanitarian efforts in the devastated territory and Gaza health officials have warned of potential “mass deaths” in coming days from hunger.

Israeli tank shelling killed at least 12 Palestinians and wounded dozens others in a tent encampment in western Gaza City north of the territory, local health authorities said early on Tuesday.

Medics said the tanks stationed north of Shati camp fired two shells at tents, housing displaced families, killing at least 12 people.

There has been no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the incident.

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s coverage of the Middle East.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the Israeli military attacked its staff residence and main warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Monday, compromising its operations in Gaza.

The WHO said its staff residence was attacked three times, with airstrikes causing a fire and extensive damage, and endangering staff and their families, including children.

On Monday, Israeli tanks for the first time pushed into southern and eastern districts of Deir al-Balah, an area where Israeli sources said the military believes hostages may be held. Tank shelling in the area hit houses and mosques, killing at least three Palestinians and wounding several others, local medics said.

“Israeli military entered the premises, forcing women and children to evacuate on foot toward al-Mawasi amid active conflict. Male staff and family members were handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot, and screened at gunpoint,” the WHO said.

Two WHO staff and two family members were detained, it said in a post on X. It said three were later released, while one staff member remained in detention. Its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “WHO demands the immediate release of the detained staff and protection of all its staff.”

Israel on Monday rejected the joint statement published by over 20 countries calling for an end to the war in Gaza, “as it is disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas”, the foreign ministry said.

The international statement – signed by Australia, the UK, France, Canada, New Zealand and Japan among others – warned “the suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths”.

Israeli tank shelling killed at least 12 Palestinians and wounded dozens others in a tent encampment in western Gaza City north of the territory, local health authorities said early on Tuesday.

Medics said the tanks stationed north of Shati camp fired two shells at tents, housing displaced families, killing at least 12 people.

There has been no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the incident.

In other developments:

• In its daily update, Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday at least 130 Palestinians had been killed and more than 1,000 wounded by Israeli gunfire and military strikes across the territory in the past 24 hours, one of the highest such totals in recent weeks.

• An Israeli army strike on the only Catholic church in Gaza last week has pushed the Vatican to change its tone on Israel and blame it more directly in the dragging war. The strike killed three people in the Holy Family Church in the centre of Gaza City, prompting condemnation by politicians and by religious leaders of various denominations. Pope Leo XIV on Sunday slammed the “barbarity” of the war and the blind “use of force”, denouncing “the attack by the Israeli army”.

• An Israeli undercover force detained Marwan Al-Hams, a senior Gaza Health Ministry official, outside the field hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday, the ministry said. It said that Hams, in charge of field hospitals in the territory, was on his way to visit the ICRC hospital in the city of Rafah when an Israeli force “abducted” him after opening fire, killing one person and wounding another civilian nearby.

• Belgian authorities said on Monday that they had briefly held and questioned two Israeli citizens who attended an electronic music festival, after pro-Palestinian groups accused them of war crimes. Prosecutors said they received legal complaints alleging that two Israeli soldiers responsible for “serious violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza were spotted at the Tomorrowland festival near the northern city of Antwerp last week.

• Syrian authorities evacuated Bedouin families from the Druze-majority city of Sweida on Monday, after a ceasefire in the southern province halted a week of sectarian bloodshed that a monitor said killed more than 1,260 people. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the ceasefire was largely holding despite isolated gunfire in areas north of Sweida city, with no new reports of casualties.

• US president Donald Trump was “caught off guard” by Israeli strikes in Syria last week, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Monday, adding that he discussed the issue with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had launched strikes on the capital Damascus and the southern Druze-majority city of Sweida, saying it aimed to put pressure on the Syrian government to withdraw its troops from the region amid ongoing clashes there.

• Iran has no plans to abandon its nuclear programme including uranium enrichment despite the “severe” damage caused by US strikes to its facilities, the country’s foreign minister said ahead of renewed talks with European powers. Iran is scheduled to meet Britain, France and Germany in Istanbul on Friday, to discuss its nuclear programme, with Tehran accusing European powers of scuppering a landmark 2015 nuclear deal. The meeting will be the first since Iran’s 12-day war with Israel last month, during which the United States carried out strikes against Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

• Visiting US envoy Tom Barrack said Monday that disarming Hezbollah was a domestic issue, even as Washington presses the new authorities for action after the group was weakened by war with Israel. Lebanese leaders who took office in the aftermath of more than a year of hostilities, including two months of open war between Israel and Hezbollah, have vowed a state monopoly on bearing arms, while demanding Israel comply with a November ceasefire.

• The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel that triggered sirens across several areas in the country. The launch from Yemen follows an Israeli military attack on Houthi targets in Yemen’s Hodeidah port on Monday in its latest assault on the Iran-backed militants, who have been striking ships bound for Israel and launching missiles against it.

• Iranian authorities have asked people to limit water consumption amid severe heatwaves and a water crisis across the country. Iran is experiencing its hottest week of the year, according to the national meteorological service, with temperatures exceeding 50C in some areas. On top of the extreme heat, the country is in a serious water crisis.