World
WHO: Tuberculosis response recovering from pandemic; accelerated efforts needed to meet new targets
The World Health Organization (WHO) 2023 Global tuberculosis (TB) report underscores a significant worldwide recovery in the scale-up of TB diagnosis and treatment services in 2022.
It shows an encouraging trend starting to reverse the detrimental effects of COVID- 19 disruptions on TB services.
Featuring data from 192 countries and areas, the report shows that 7.5 million people were diagnosed with TB in 2022, making it the highest figure recorded since WHO began global TB monitoring in 1995.
The increase is attributed to good recovery in access to and provision of health services in many countries. India, Indonesia and the Philippines, which together accounted for over 60% of the global reductions in the number of people newly diagnosed with TB in 2020 and 2021, all recovered to beyond 2019 levels in 2022.
“For millennia, our ancestors suffered and died with tuberculosis, without knowing what it was, what caused it, or how to stop it,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
“Today, we have knowledge and tools they could only have dreamed of. We have political commitment, and we have an opportunity that no generation in the history of humanity has had: the opportunity to write the final chapter in the story of TB.”
Globally, an estimated 10.6 million people fell ill with TB in 2022, up from 10.3 million in 2021. Geographically, in 2022, most people who developed TB were in the WHO Regions of South-East Asia (46%), Africa (23%) and the Western Pacific (18%), with smaller proportions in the Eastern Mediterranean (8.1%), the Americas (3.1%) and Europe (2.2%).
The total number of TB-related deaths (including those among people with HIV) was 1.3 million in 2022, down from 1.4 million in 2021.
However, during the 2020-2022 period, COVID-19 disruptions resulted in nearly half a million more deaths from TB. TB continues to be the leading killer among people with HIV.
Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) remains a public health crisis. While an estimated 410 000 people developed multidrug-resistant or rifampicin-resistant TB (MDR/RR-TB) in 2022, only about two in five people accessed treatment.
There is some progress in the development of new TB diagnostics, drugs and vaccines. However, this is constrained by the overall level of investment in these areas.
Accelerating action and investment to reach new targets
WHO reports that global efforts to combat TB have saved over 75 million lives since the year 2000. However, even more efforts are needed as TB remained the world’s second leading infectious killer in 2022.
Despite significant recovery in 2022, progress was insufficient to meet global TB targets set in 2018 with disruptions caused by the pandemic and ongoing conflicts being major contributing factors:
· the net decrease in TB-related deaths from 2015 to 2022 was 19%, falling far short of the WHO End TB Strategy milestone of a 75% reduction by 2025;
· the cumulative reduction in the TB incidence rate from 2015 to 2022 was 8.7%, far from the WHO End TB Strategy milestone of a 50% reduction by 2025;
· about 50% of TB patients and their households face total costs that are catastrophic (direct medical expenditures, non-medical expenditures and indirect costs such as income losses that amount to more than 20% of total household income), far from the WHO End TB Strategy target of zero;
· the targets set for 2018-2022 in the political declaration of the first UN High-Level Meeting on TB were not met, with only 84% of the 40 million people targeted for TB treatment reached; and only 52% of the 30 million people targeted for TB preventive treatment accessing it; and
· less than half of the funding targeted for TB service delivery and research was mobilized.
The 2023 UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on TB reinforced the 2018 commitments and targets, setting out new targets for the period of 2023-2027.
The new targets include reaching 90% of people in need with TB prevention and care services; using a WHO-recommended rapid test as the first method of diagnosing TB; providing a health and social benefit package to all people with TB; ensuring the availability of at least one new TB vaccine that is safe and effective; and closing funding gaps for TB implementation and research by 2027.
“We have strong commitments with concrete targets made by world leaders in the political declaration of the second UN High-Level Meeting on TB, that provides a strong impetus to accelerate the TB response,” said Dr Tereza Kasaeva, Director of WHO’s Global TB Programme.
“This report provides key data and evidence on the status of the TB epidemic and a review of progress, that serves to inform the translation of these targets and commitments into action in countries. We need all hands on deck to make the vision of ending TB a reality.”
The report additionally stresses the importance of concerted action across the health and other sectors to address the social, environmental and economic determinants of TB and consequences of inaction.
WHO continues to support the engagement of other sectors in the TB response, through its Multisectoral Accountability Framework.
In 2022, outside of the health sector, education was the most engaged sector in TB advocacy and information-sharing, followed by the defence sector and justice sector, for TB prevention and care services, and the social development sector for patient support, including provision of economic, social and nutritional benefits.
The report emphasizes that ending the global TB epidemic requires translating the commitments made at the 2023 UN High-Level meeting on TB into real action, changing the lives and livelihoods in communities.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accuses Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza, says colleagues more focused on silencing her
Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American member of Congress, has released a video in which she has accused US President Joe Biden of allowing genocide in Gaza.
The White House and some Democrats reacted sharply to that, reports BBC.
Tlaib declines to visit West Bank, citing Israeli conditions
Republicans in the House have introduced two separate measures to censure her amid criticism of her remarks from both parties.
Tlaib stated that her colleagues were "more focused on silencing me than they are on saving lives".
A month into war, Netanyahu says Israel will have an 'overall security' role in Gaza indefinitely
Tlaib, a Democrat, addressed Biden directly in a video shared to social media on Friday, calling for a cease-fire.
It included videos of Biden expressing his support for Israel, as well as footage of those killed and wounded in Gaza and pro-Palestinian marches around the United States.
Civilians fleeing northern Gaza's combat zone report a terrifying journey on foot past Israeli tanks
"Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people," titles at the end of the video read. "The American people won't forget."
People in the video are also shouting the phrase "from the river to the sea," which advocates for Palestinian rule of all area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel.
According to Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the phrase is a call to destroy the state of Israel.
Some pro-Palestinian activists argue that the majority of those singing it are asking for an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza, rather than the destruction of Israel itself, the BBC report added.
Tlaib is one of just three Muslim legislators in US Congress. She has long enraged party officials and pro-Israel organisations with her unwavering condemnation of Israel.
The slogan is "an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate," she said defending her latest remarks.
However, the remark has sparked outrage from all quarters, even Democratic friends in her home state.
Masks are back, construction banned and schools shut as toxic air engulfs New Delhi
A toxic blanket of grey smog hangs over New Delhi’s monuments and high-rises. Schools have been ordered shut and construction banned. People are back to wearing masks.
In the Indian capital, it is that time of the year again. Authorities are struggling to rein in severe air pollution levels, an annual and chronic health crisis that disrupts the lives of over 20 million in the city every year.
On Tuesday, the air quality index veered close to the 400 mark for tiny particulate matter, a level considered hazardous and more than 10 times the global safety threshold, according to SAFAR, India’s main environmental monitoring agency. It’s the fifth consecutive day of bad air in the region.
“There’s too much smog. I’m watching the air quality index and I’m scared about this climate,” said Srinivas Rao, a visitor from Andhra Pradesh state who donned a mask as he took a morning walk near the city's India Gate monument.
Read: Indian states vote in key test for opposition and PM Modi ahead of 2024 national election
Authorities have deployed water sprinklers and anti-smog guns to control the haze and announced a fine of 20,000 rupees ($240) for drivers found using gasoline and diesel cars, buses and trucks that create smog. Meanwhile, doctors have advised residents to wear masks and avoid outdoors as much as possible because the smog could trigger respiratory infections, flu and asthma attacks.
The pollution also threatens to disrupt the ongoing Cricket World Cup, hosted by India, after the Sri Lankan team had to cancel their training session in New Delhi over the weekend, before they faced Bangladesh on Monday at the Arun Jaitley Stadium.
Demand for air purifiers has risen in the past week, local media reported.
Read: Indian states vote in key test for opposition and PM Modi ahead of 2024 national election
Residents like Renu Aggarwal, 55, are worried the smog will worsen as Diwali, the Hindu festival of light that features the lighting of firecrackers, approaches this weekend. Her daughter has a pollen allergy that worsens with pollution.
“She cannot breathe. Even though we keep the doors and windows shut in our home, the pollution still affects her so much that even going to the washroom is difficult for her. And she gets breathless,” she said.
New Delhi tops the list almost every year of many Indian cities with poor air quality, particularly in the winter, when the burning of crop residues in neighboring states coincides with cooler temperatures that trap hazardous smoke.
The burning of crop remnants at the start of the winter wheat-sowing season is a key contributor to the pollution in north India. Authorities have been trying to discourage farmers by offering cash incentives to buy machines to do the job. But smoke from crop burning still accounts for 25% of the pollution in New Delhi, according to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune.
New Delhi saw a sharp 32% rise in tiny particles in the air between 2019 and 2020, a dip of 43.7 % in 2021, and a steady increase in 2022 and 2023, according to Respirer Living Sciences, an organization that monitors air quality and other environmental factors.
The severe air pollution crisis affects every resident in the city, but the millions who work outdoors are even more vulnerable.
Read: AESL commissions 2500 MW Green Evacuation 400 kV System in Tamil Nadu
Gulshan Kumar, who drives an auto rickshaw, said his nose, throat and eyes regularly fill up with dirt in the air.
His children plead with him to return to his hometown in Bihar state. “They ask me why I work in this polluted and diseased city,” he said. "If I had had employment back home, I wouldn’t have come to Delhi to work.”
A month into war, Netanyahu says Israel will have an 'overall security' role in Gaza indefinitely
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will have “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an indefinite period after its war with Hamas, the clearest indication yet that Israel plans to maintain control over the coastal enclave that is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
In an interview with ABC News that aired late Monday, Netanyahu expressed openness to “little pauses” in the fighting to facilitate the release of some of the more than 240 captives seized by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack into Israel, which triggered the war exactly one month ago.
But he ruled out any general cease-fire without the release of all the hostages, and the White House said there was no agreement with United States President Joe Biden's call for a broader humanitarian pause after a phone call between the leaders on Monday.
Read: Israeli forces cut off north Gaza as Palestinian death toll from monthlong war passes 10,000
Israeli troops have been battling Palestinian militants inside Gaza for over a week, and have succeeded in cutting the territory in half and encircling Gaza City.
The war has come at a staggering cost. Airstrikes have leveled entire city blocks across the territory, and around 70% of the population has fled their homes, with many heeding Israeli orders to head to the southern part of the besieged territory, which is also being bombed. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and United Nations-run schools-turned-shelters are overflowing.
The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 10,000, the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Monday, including over 4,100 children. More than 2,300 people are missing and believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, the ministry said. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of fighters.
About 1,400 people in Israel have died, mostly civilians killed in the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war. Israel has vowed to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.
Israel is focused on Gaza City, which before the war was home to some 650,000 people — about equal to the population of Washington, D.C. Israel says Hamas has extensive militant infrastructure in the city, including a vast tunnel network, and accuses it of using civilians as human shields.
Several hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path. The military says a one-way corridor for residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas to flee south remains available. But many are afraid to use the route, part of which is held by Israeli troops.
Residents in northern Gaza reported heavy battles overnight into Tuesday morning in the outskirts of Gaza City. The Shati refugee camp, a built-up district housing refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants, has been heavily bombarded from the air and sea over the past two days, residents said.
Marwan Abdullah, who is among thousands of people sheltering at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, said they heard constant explosions overnight as ambulances brought dead and wounded in from the Shati camp. “We couldn’t sleep. Things get worse day by day,” he said.
Read: Jordan airdrops medical supplies to Gaza hospital
A strike early Monday hit the roof of Shifa Hospital, killing a number of displaced people sheltering on its top floor and destroying solar panels, said Mohamed Zaqout, general manager of all hospitals in Gaza. The panels have been helping keep power on in the facility, which has been reduced to using one generator because of lack of fuel.
In southern Gaza, where Palestinians have been told to seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike destroyed several homes early Tuesday in the town of Khan Younis. First responders pulled five bodies — including three dead children — from the rubble, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.
The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the war began, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles with Israeli forces during arrest raids.
Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community and considers the entire city its capital. It has built settlements across the occupied West Bank that are now home to over 500,000 Jewish settlers.
Israeli officials have said little about their plans for a post-Hamas Gaza, while indicating they don't want to reoccupy the territory. Israel withdrew its troops and more than 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 but maintained control over the territory's airspace, coastline, population registry and all but one of its border crossings.
Hamas seized power from forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas two years later, confining his Palestinian Authority to parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Since then, Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza to varying degrees. Israel says the blockade is needed to keep Hamas from rearming, while the Palestinians and rights groups see it as a form of collective punishment.
Read: Blinken meets Palestinian leader in West Bank, stepping up Mideast diplomacy as Gaza war escalates
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who wrapped up a dayslong trip to the region on Monday, has suggested a revitalized Palestinian Authority could govern Gaza. But Abbas has said it would only do so as part of a solution to the conflict that establishes a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. Israel's government is strongly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu told ABC News that Gaza should be governed by “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas," without elaborating.
“I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility, because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” he said.
The military says 30 Israeli troops have been killed since the ground offensive began over a week ago. Hamas and other militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, disrupting daily life even as most are intercepted or fall in open areas. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated from communities near the volatile borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid is far short of mounting needs. Egypt's Rafah Crossing has also opened to allow hundreds of foreign passport holders and medical patients to leave Gaza.
Israel-Hamas war crowds crisis-heavy global agenda as Blinken, G7 foreign ministers meet in Japan
Fresh from a whirlwind tour of the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shifted his intense diplomacy on the Israel-Hamas war to Asia on Tuesday, as he and his counterparts from the Group of Seven leading industrial democracies began two days of talks in Japan.
The devastating monthlong conflict in Gaza and efforts to ease the dire humanitarian impacts of Israel's response to the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack were set to be a major focus of the meeting. Yet with the Russia-Ukraine war, fears North Korea may be readying a new nuclear test, and concerns about China's increasing global assertiveness, it is far from the only crisis on the agenda.
“Even as we are intensely focused on the crisis in Gaza, we’re also very much engaged and focused on the important work that we’re doing in the Indo-Pacific and in other parts of the world,” Blinken told reporters in Ankara, Turkey, before leaving the Middle East for Asia.
Read: UN Security Council fails to agree on Israel-Hamas war as Gaza death toll passes 10,000
In Tokyo, Blinken and foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy will be looking for common ground on approaches to the Israel-Hamas war that threatens to destabilize already shaky security in the broader Middle East and seeking to maintain existing consensus positions on the other issues.
Before wrapping up the Mideast portion of his trip — a four-day whirlwind that included stops in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, Cyprus, Iraq and Turkey — Blinken said he would brief his G7 colleagues on the status of his efforts, seeking their advice and pressing ahead.
“I’ll have an opportunity to debrief my colleagues on what we’ve learned and what we’ve done during this trip, and to continue that work and carry it forward,” he said.
Those efforts include significantly expanding the amount of humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza, pushing Israel to agree to “pauses” in its military operation to allow that assistance to get in and more civilians to get out, beginning planning for a post-conflict governance and security structure in the territory and preventing the war from spreading.
Read: Man accused of Antarctic assault was then sent to remote icefield with young graduate students
Blinken described all of these as “a work in progress” and acknowledged deep divisions over the pause concept. Israel remains unconvinced and Arab and Muslim nations are demanding an immediate full cease-fire, something the United States opposes. There has also been resistance to discussing Gaza's future, with the Arab states insisting that the immediate humanitarian crisis must be addressed first.
Securing agreement from G7 members, none of which border or are directly involved in the conflict, may be a slightly less daunting challenge for Blinken.
Since before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the G7 has held together in defense of the international order that emerged from the destruction of World War II. Despite some fraying around the edges, the group has preserved a unified front in condemning and opposing Russia’s war.
The group similarly has been of one voice in demanding that North Korea halt its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, that China exercise its growing international clout responsibly, and also in calling for cooperative actions to combat pandemics, synthetic opioids, and threats from the misuse of artificial intelligence.
Read: Blinken shuttles from the West Bank to Iraq trying to contain the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war
Yet the Gaza crisis has inflamed international public opinion and democracies are not immune from intense passions that have manifested themselves in massive pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations in G7 capitals and elsewhere.
Civilians fleeing northern Gaza's combat zone report a terrifying journey on foot past Israeli tanks
What was once Gaza’s busiest thoroughfare has become a terrifying escape route for Palestinian civilians fleeing combat on foot or on donkey carts. On their way south, those running for their lives said they raised their hands and waved white flags to move past Israeli tanks along the four-lane highway.
Some reported Israeli soldiers firing at them and said they passed bodies strewn alongside the road.
Many escaped with just the clothes on their back. One woman, covered head-to-toe in a black veil and robe, cradled a toddler and clutched a black purse. A man walked alongside a covered donkey cart that transported his family. It was piled high with mattresses.
In the north of the Gaza Strip, Israeli ground forces backed by relentless airstrikes have encircled Gaza City, the base of Hamas ' power, since the weekend. They cut the strip in half and sought to drive Palestinians from northern Gaza as troops advanced.
From early on in the war, now in its second month, the army has urged civilians to move south, including by announcing brief windows for what it said would be safe passage through Salah al-Din, which runs through the center of the besieged enclave.
Read: Indian states vote in key test for opposition and PM Modi ahead of 2024 national election
But tens of thousands of civilians have remained in the north, many sheltering in hospitals or United Nations facilities.
Those who have stayed put say they are deterred by overcrowding in the south, along with dwindling water and food supplies, and continued Israeli airstrikes in what are supposed to be safe areas. Some said fear of the treacherous journey south, following reports from other travelers about coming under fire, initially made them hesitate.
On Monday, Health Ministry in Gaza spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra dismissed the Israeli offers of safe passage as "nothing but death corridors.” He said bodies have lined the road for days, and called for the International Committee of the Red Cross to accompany local ambulances to retrieve the dead.
Israel’s military said that at one point, troops came under Hamas fire when trying to open the road temporarily for civilians. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the army's claims in an interview with ABC News broadcast late Monday.
“We are fighting an enemy that is particularly brutal. They are using their civilians as human shields, and while we are asking the Palestinian civilian population to leave the war zone, they are preventing them at gunpoint," Netanyahu said.
The claims could not be verified independently.
Read: After Biden and Blinken push, Netanyahu says Israel open to 'little pauses' in Gaza, no cease-fire
During a four-hour evacuation window Sunday, fewer than 2,000 made the move, followed by about 5,000 on Monday, according to U.N. monitors.
Some of those were from Gaza City and the adjacent Shati refugee camp, fleeing Monday after heavy Israeli bombardment there overnight.
“Last night was very difficult," said Amal, a young woman who declined to give her family name due to safety concerns. She was part of a group of 17 people making the journey Monday. She said tanks fired near the group. Soldiers then ordered everyone to raise their hands and white flags before being allowed to pass.
Nour Naji Abu Nasser, 27, arrived Sunday in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. She described an hourslong frightening journey.
“They fired at the sand around us. They wanted to scare us,” she said, adding that she saw bodies lying along the road outside Gaza City.
Once those fleeing the north had reached the evacuation zone, residents from the Bureij refugee camp along the highway offered water — a scarce resource in war-time Gaza — to the evacuees.
The four-week war has displaced about 1.5 million people across Gaza, according to U.N. figures.
The Israeli military said thousands heeded its orders to move south, but U.N. humanitarian monitors said thousands of evacuees returned to their homes in the north because of ongoing bombardment across Gaza and the lack of shelters in the south.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says more than 530,000 people are sheltering in its facilities in southern Gaza, and it's now unable to accommodate new arrivals. Many displaced people sought safety by sleeping in the streets near U.N. shelters, the agency said.
Indian states vote in key test for opposition and PM Modi ahead of 2024 national election
Two Indian states began voting in local elections on Tuesday in a test of strength for India’s opposition, which is pitted against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party ahead of a crucial national vote scheduled for next year.
The elections in central Chhattisgarh and northeastern Mizoram states, along with polls in three others states over the next three weeks, are expected to give an indication of voter mood before India’s political parties gear up for nationwide elections in 2024 in which Modi is eyeing a third consecutive term.
A second round of voting in Chhattisgarh will be held on Nov. 17 along with polls in central Madhya Pradesh state. Polls in two more states, western Rajasthan and southern Telangana, will be held Nov. 23 and Nov. 30. Votes in all five states will be counted on Dec. 3 and results will be declared the same day.
The Indian National Congress, India’s main opposition party, holds power in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party rules Madhya Pradesh and its regional ally is in power in Mizoram. Telangana is ruled by a strong regional party.
The Congress party also leads the INDIA alliance, which is aiming to keep Modi’s increasingly powerful sway at bay. The acronym, which stands for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, comprises India’s previously fractured opposition parties.
Read: Primary schools in India's Delhi to remain closed as air pollution worsens
Modi and leaders of the Congress party headed by Rahul Gandhi have traveled across the five states in a charged-up election campaign trying to woo voters by promising them subsidies, loan waivers and employment guarantees.
Modi and his party remain popular nationally after nearly a decade in power and surveys suggest he is expected to win a third term as prime minister. But his party is expected to face tough challenges in all five state polls where issues like rising unemployment and commodity price increases are likely to play on voters' minds.
Meanwhile, the Congress party hopes to revive its fortunes in these states ahead of the national polls next year. It has announced welfare schemes for women and farmers in states where it is in a direct contest with Modi’s party.
The local polls will also test the INDIA alliance’s strength after it came together to take on Modi in July.
Read: US Secretary of State Blinken will be in India on Nov 10 to join dialogue
During his nine years in power, Modi has consolidated his party’s reach in north and central India. But the party has faced tough challenges in states where regional parties hold influence.
In recent polls, Congress toppled local BJP governments in state elections in southern Karnataka and northern Himachal Pradesh, denting the ruling party’s image of invincibility.
Modi will seek reelection next year at a time when India’s global diplomatic reach is rising. However, his rule at home has coincided with a struggling economy, rising unemployment, attacks by Hindu nationalists against the country’s minorities, particularly Muslims, and a shrinking space for dissent and free media.
Israeli forces cut off north Gaza to isolate Hamas as an advance on the urban center looms
The Israeli army severed northern Gaza from the rest of the besieged territory and pounded it with airstrikes Monday, preparing for expected ground battles with Hamas militants in Gaza's largest city and an even bloodier phase of the month-old war.
Already, the Palestinian death toll surpassed 10,000, the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Monday. The ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. About 1,400 people in Israel have died, mostly civilians killed in the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war.
The war has quickly become the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence since Israel’s establishment 75 years ago, with no end in sight as Israel vows to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.
Casualties are likely to rise sharply as the war turns to close urban combat. Troops are expected to enter Gaza City soon, Israeli media reported, and Palestinian militants who have had years to prepare are likely to fight street by street, launching ambushes from a vast network of tunnels.
Read: After Biden and Blinken push, Netanyahu says Israel open to 'little pauses' in Gaza, no cease-fire
“We’re closing in on them,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesperson. “We’ve completed our encirclement, separating Hamas strongholds in the north from the south.”
BOMBARDMENT IN NORTH GAZASeveral hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path. The military says a one-way corridor for residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas to flee south remains available. But many are afraid to use the route, part of which is held by Israeli troops.
In recent days, airstrikes have hit United Nations facilities where thousands were sheltering, as well as hospitals, which have been overwhelmed by wounded and running low on power and supplies.
A strike early Monday hit the roof of Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, killing a number of displaced people sheltering on its top floor and destroying solar panels, said Mohamed Zaqout, general manager of all hospitals in Gaza. The panels have been helping keep power on in the facility, which has been reduced to using one generator because of lack of fuel.
The strike came in what witnesses said was one of the heaviest nights of bombardment yet in northern Gaza.
Israel said it struck 450 targets overnight, killing a number of Hamas military commanders. Israel blames civilian casualties on Hamas, accusing the militants of operating in residential neighborhoods.
The overnight barrages crushed homes and buried unknown numbers of people underneath in the Shati refugee camp, a densely built-up district on the Mediterranean coast adjacent to central Gaza City, Palestinians who fled south Monday reported.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a surgeon at Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press the hospital buildings shook all night from the bombardment “and we started getting the bodies and the wounded. It was horrendous.”
The military released videos that it said showed its ground troops uncovering Hamas rocket launchers in a youth center and near a mosque in northern Gaza. It did not provide the precise locations where the videos were filmed, and the images did not include any visible landmarks, so The Associated Press could not independently confirm the videos.
Around 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have fled their homes since the war began. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters are beyond capacity. Many people are sleeping on the streets outside.
Mobile phone and internet service went down overnight — the third territory-wide outage since the start of the war — but was gradually restored on Monday.
Read: UN Security Council fails to agree on Israel-Hamas war as Gaza death toll passes 10,000
ISRAEL IS OPEN TO ‘LITTLE PAUSES,’ NETANYAHU SAYSUnited States President Joe Biden raised the need for humanitarian pauses directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a call Monday, but there was no agreement reached, the White House said.
Lulls in the fighting are being sought to facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries and the release of some of the estimated 240 hostages seized by Hamas in its raid.
After days of intense diplomacy around the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up his tour of the region Monday. He said efforts to secure a pause, negotiate the hostages' release and plan for a post-Hamas Gaza were still “a work in progress."
Hours later, Netanyahu, in an interview with ABC News, suggested an openness to “little pauses” — although it was not clear whether some kind of small stoppage had been agreed to or whether the U.S. was satisfied with the scope of the Israeli commitment. Netanyahu also said there would be no general cease-fire in Gaza without the hostages' release.
The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. In another sign of growing unrest, a Palestinian man stabbed two members of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police in east Jerusalem before being shot dead, according to police and an AP reporter at the scene. Police said one of the officers, a 20-year-old woman, was later pronounced dead.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces shot to death four Palestinian men in a vehicle in the city of Tulkarem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said two of the men were high-ranking militants.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with Gaza and the West Bank, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community; it considers the entire city its capital.
In northern Gaza, a Jordanian military cargo plane air-dropped medical aid to a field hospital, King Abdullah II said early Monday. It appeared to be the first such airdrop of the war, raising the possibility of another avenue for aid delivery besides Egypt’s Rafah crossing.
Over 450 trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid is far short of mounting needs.
The crossing was closed over the weekend because of a dispute among Israel, Egypt and Hamas, but reopened Monday. Seven Palestinian patients were evacuated to Egypt, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
FLEEING SOUTHSome 800,000 people have heeded Israeli military orders to flee to southern Gaza. But continued Israeli strikes in central and southern Gaza — the purported safe zone — killed dozens of people Sunday.
After another strike Monday, in the southern town of Khan Younis, men dug through the rubble with sledgehammers and their bare hands. A young boy caked in dust screamed as he was rolled onto a stretcher and carried away. At least two people were killed, according to an AP reporter at the scene.
Earlier Monday, Palestinians held a mass funeral for 66 people laid out on the ground outside a hospital morgue in the central town of Deir al-Balah. A man with bandages wrapped around his head placed his hand on a child’s body and wept.
The Health Ministry said that 10,022 people have been killed in Gaza, including over 4,100 children. More than 2,300 people are missing and believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, the ministry said.
The Israeli army said 30 Israeli troops have been killed since the ground offensive began over a week ago. Hamas and other militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, disrupting daily life even as most are intercepted or fall in open areas. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated from communities near the volatile borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
40 people dead in Kenya and Somalia as heavy rains and flash floods displace thousands
Heavy rains and flash flooding have killed at least 40 people and displaced tens of thousands in Kenya and Somalia, aid agencies reported Monday.
In Somalia, the government declared an emergency after the extreme weather killed at least 25 people and destroyed homes, roads and bridges. Emergency and rescue workers were trying to reach an estimated 2,400 residents trapped by floodwaters in the Luuq district of southern Somalia’s Jubaland state.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned of a high risk of flooding along the Juba and Shabelle rivers and called for the evacuation of people living along the entire stretch of the Juba.
“The Somalia Disaster Management Agency is swiftly responding to the crisis, with plans to dispatch a flight to Dollow and transport two boats from Kismayo to Luuq and one to Baardhere to assist with evacuations,” Hassan Isse, the agency's managing director, told The Associated Press.
“The magnitude of the current floods is likely to deteriorate in the next few days due to the emergence of more water from upstream in the Ethiopian Highlands," Isse said.
The heavy rains follow four consecutive years of drought that pushed Somalia to the brink of famine.
Read: UN Security Council fails to agree on Israel-Hamas war as Gaza death toll passes 10,000
In neighboring Kenya, the Kenya Red Cross said the death toll had risen to 15 since the heavy rains began Friday, with the port city of Mombasa and the northeastern counties of Mandera and Wajir the worst affected.
As of Sunday, flash floods had destroyed 241 acres of farmland and killed 1,067 livestock, the Kenya Red Cross reported.
Weather forecasters in Kenya started warning in September that rains would be heavier than usual during the short rainy season between October and December.
President William Ruto contradicted the forecast, telling Kenyans that the experts had revised their advice and that “there would be no devastating El Nino flooding.”
Read: Israeli forces cut off north Gaza as Palestinian death toll from monthlong war passes 10,000
Heavy rains and flooding have also been reported in the Somali region of Ethiopia where thousands have been forced to flee their homes after houses and farmlands were destroyed by flood waters.
After Biden and Blinken push, Netanyahu says Israel open to 'little pauses' in Gaza, no cease-fire
After more than a week of public pressure from the U.S. for “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday allowed that his government might be open to only “little pauses” in its assault on Hamas. The Israeli leader sought to play down differences with his country's most vocal backer on the world stage at a time of rising scrutiny of the sharply rising civilian toll of fighting.
Netanyahu spoke after President Joe Biden made a direct appeal to him nearly a month into the war seeking to rally support behind securing even limited relief for civilians in the spiraling conflict. The back-and-forth spotlighted the challenges facing Biden and his administration as they seek to manage what is emerging as one of the defining foreign policy crises of his presidency.
Read: UN Security Council fails to agree on Israel-Hamas war as Gaza death toll passes 10,000
The U.S. thus far remains focused on keeping the fighting from exploding into a wider regional war and pushing for limited steps to alleviate civilian suffering. But it has remained steadfastly behind Israel and Netanyahu's goal of ending Hamas control over Gaza, even as the death toll in Gaza reached 10,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Biden used his first conversation with Netanyahu in eight days to repeat in private his public calls for lulls in the fighting to allow civilians to flee Israel's campaign to crush Hamas and for humanitarian aid to flow to hundreds of thousands in need.
“We consider ourselves at the beginning of this conversation, not at the end of it,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said when describing Biden's conversation with Netanyahu, "so you can expect that we’re going to continue to advocate for temporary, localized pauses in the fighting.”
Hours later, Netanyahu, in an interview with ABC News, ruled out any widespread cease-fire, but suggested an openness to “little pauses" — though it was not clear whether some kind of small stoppage had been agreed to or whether the U.S. was satisfied with the scope of the Israeli commitment.
Read: Jordan airdrops medical supplies to Gaza hospital
“Well, there’ll be no cease-fire, general cease-fire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu said when asked about Biden’s call for humanitarian pauses. “As far as tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there. We’ve had them before, I suppose, we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages to leave. But I don’t think there’s going to be a general cease-fire.”
Biden’s engagement with Netanyahu followed Secretary of State Antony Blinken's frantic weekend of travel that took him from Israel to Jordan, the occupied West Bank, Cyprus, Iraq and onto Turkey to build support for the Biden administration’s proposal for the humanitarian initiatives.
“All of this is a work in progress,” Blinken said before leaving Turkey. “We don’t obviously agree on everything, but there are common views on some of the imperatives of the moment that we’re working on together.”
CIA Director William Burns also was in the Middle East meeting with intelligence partners and leaders of several countries, a U.S. official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss Burns’ typically off-the-record travel plans. The U.S. intends for his discussions to reinforce American commitment to intelligence cooperation, especially on terror and security, the official said.
Read: Israeli warplanes hit refugee camps in Gaza while UN agencies call siege an 'outrage'
The flurry of U.S. diplomacy came as Israeli troops surrounded Gaza City and cut off the northern part of the besieged Hamas-ruled territory. Troops were preparing to enter the city, where they were likely to face militants fighting street by street using a vast network of tunnels. Casualties will likely rise on both sides.
Asked whether the toll gave the U.S. pause for its staunch support for Israel, Kirby said, “I think we all need to remember who they’re fighting,” and he referenced Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion into Israel that killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and started the war. He insisted no country would tolerate such an attack “without a swift and aggressive response."
Kirby said the U.S. was having “frank” conversations with Israelis about trying to reduce the civilian death toll, but it was not directly involved in Israel's targeting decisions nor was it helping develop the country's operational plans for its invasion of Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.
Blinken said pauses in the war would allow for a surge of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the release of the more than 200 hostages captured by Hamas while also preventing the conflict from spreading regionally.
Read: Blinken shuttles from the West Bank to Iraq trying to contain the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war
“We’ve engaged the Israelis on steps that they can take to minimize civilian casualties,” Blinken said before leaving Ankara. “We’re working, as I said, very aggressively on getting more humanitarian assistance into Gaza.”
“We are very focused on the hostages held by Hamas, including the Americans, and we are doing everything possible to bring them home,” he added.
As Blinken's meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan got underway, dozens of protesters from an Islamist group waved Turkish and Palestinian flags and held up anti-U.S. and anti-Israel placards outside the Foreign Ministry. Police earlier in the day dispersed a group of students marching toward the ministry chanting “murderer Blinken, get out of Turkey!”
Also Monday, about 150 people rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, carrying a large banner that read “No to genocide!”
Blinken did not meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been highly critical of Netanyahu and an outlier among NATO allies in not expressing full support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
Turkish officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, said Fidan had urged Blinken to prevent the targeting of civilians in Gaza and their forced displacement, and also press for a “full cease-fire.”
Blinken's mission, his second to the region since the war began, has found only tepid, if any, support for his efforts to contain the fallout from the conflict. Israel had rejected the idea of pauses, while Arab nations were demanding an immediate cease-fire as the casualty toll soared among Palestinian civilians.
Arab states are resisting American suggestions that they play a larger role in resolving the crisis, expressing outrage at the civilian toll of the Israeli military operations and believing Gaza to be a problem largely of Israel’s own making.
U.S. officials are seeking to convince Israel of the strategic importance of respecting the laws of war by protecting non-combatants and significantly boosting deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s beleaguered civilian population.
It remained unclear, however, if Netanyahu would agree to temporary, rolling pauses in the massive operation to eradicate Hamas — or whether outrage among Palestinians and their supporters could be assuaged if he did.
Already Jordan and Turkey have recalled their ambassadors to Israel to protest its tactics, and the tide of international opinion appears to be turning from sympathy toward Israel in the aftermath of Oct. 7 to revulsion as images of death and destruction in Gaza spread around the world.
On Saturday in Amman, Jordan's capital, the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers appeared at a joint news conference with Blinken. The two said Israel’s war had gone beyond self-defense and could no longer be justified as it now amounted to collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
That sentiment was echoed by tens of thousands of demonstrators who marched in the streets of world capitals over the weekend to protest Israel and condemn U.S. support for Israel.