Israel-Hamas War HIGHLIGHTS: WFP sends food aid to Egypt for delivery to Gaza

 A lack of clean water in the Gaza Strip is raising major concerns for human health. Gaza normally gets its water supplies from a combination of sources, including a pipeline from Israel, desalination plants on the Mediterranean Sea and wells.

The World Food Program says it has tons of aid arriving in Egypt from warehouses around the region, ready to enter Gaza. The Rome-based agency warned earlier Tuesday that stores in Gaza only have four or five days’ worth of essential food stocks available.

A Hezbollah spokesperson says the Lebanese Red Cross has collected the remains of four of the group’s militants. The Hezbollah spokesperson said the bodies belonged to militants who were pronounced dead Tuesday. He did not provide details of how they died. The Lebanese Red Cross had said it was on its way to Lebanon’s tense southern border with Israel to collect the bodies.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi declared three days of national mourning for those killed in the blast at al-Ahli Hospital and other Palestinians killed in the ongoing Hamas-Israel war. In a statement on social media, El-Sissi blamed Israel for a deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital. The Hamas-led Health Ministry in Gaza says the blast killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, many of whom were sheltering from Israeli airstrikes at the hospital.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry revised the death toll from an explosion at a Gaza City hospital down from 500 to 471 on Wednesday but did not elaborate on how authorities reached that figure.

A Hezbollah spokesperson says the Lebanese Red Cross has collected the remains of four of the group’s militants.
An AP photojournalist saw three three body bags and a bag of remains transferred from the Lebanese Red Cross to Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Unit at Hiram Hospital, which is near southern Lebanon’s city of Tyre.

The U.S. announced sanctions on Wednesday against a group of 10 Hamas members and the Palestinian militant organization’s financial network across Gaza, Sudan, Turkey, Algeria and Qatar as it responds to the surprise attack on Israel that left more than 1,000 people dead or kidnapped.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki accused Israel of “intentionally” bombing a hospital in Gaza and said the strip’s residents are being subjected to genocide.
Malki, who spoke in Saudi Arabia during a Wednesday meeting of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, alleged the Israeli military had attacked the same hospital two days earlier and warned doctors there.

The director of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza made an urgent and emotional appeal for an end to the latest Hamas-Israel war after a devastating blast there Tuesday night.
Speaking to The Associated Press by phone, Suhaila Tarazi said the grisly scenes she encountered in the aftermath of the explosion were “unlike anything I have ever seen or could ever imagine.” She was not at the hospital at at the time of the Tuesday night blast but described body parts of children strewn everywhere in the hospital and the courtyard.

A spokesperson for Hamas in Lebanon praised the decision to cancel a summit in Jordan between Arab governments and U.S. President Joe Biden following a deadly hospital blast in Gaza.
Biden was supposed to meet with Jordanian, Egyptian, and Palestinian leaders on Wednesday in Amman in hopes of resolving the ongoing Gaza-Israel war.

Fierce Israeli airstrikes hit houses in Gaza City and the southern border town of Rafah. Near the port, survivors said an Israeli airstrike hit a three-story building belonging to the Haboush family, killing 40 people and wounding 25.
In the central Gaza Strip, an airstrike hit a bakery at the Nuseirat refugee camp and ignited a massive fire that killed four bakers. Dozens of other bakeries across Gaza were forced to shut down due to a lack of water and electricity.

On Iran Envoy to India Iraj Elahi's statement that "Iran played no role in Hamas attack on Israel", Israel's deputy envoy to India Ohad Nakash Kaynar says, "He is representative of a regime that murders his own people and mass. He is not the one to criticize us and he's not a valid source of anything. And if there's something that we've learned recently, and especially this last night, we need to look extensively at what we're seeing and hearing before we rush to conclusions. He is an ambassador of a state that since 1979 has vowed to destroy us, that has armed three terror organizations on our borders... But when we say that their hand is in everything, their hand is in everything, from planning, from the targeting, from the arming, every single portion...They are doing everything around us to make sure that Israelis and Jews die. And it's a clear, clear hand of Iran. It's not a mistaken hand..."

IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari on Wednesday laid out the IDF's full comprehensive intelligence case to prove that an Islamic Jihad failed rocket caused the damage Tuesday night to a Gaza hospital, leading to a still-unclear, but large, number of Palestinian civilian deaths.

Pope Francis has announced an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Square next week to pray for peace as he begged for an end to the Israeli-Hamas conflict and the unfolding “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.

No humanitarian aid or people were passing through the Rafah border crossing as of Wednesday morning, an Egyptian official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity since he was not authorized to speak with the media.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi says his country rejects what he calls efforts to force Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, warning that such an effort would jeopardize his country’s peace with Israel.
Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, el-Sissi said Wednesday that his government views Israel’s siege on Gaza, including cutting off water, food and fuel and preventing humanitarian aid from flowing into the territory as a scheme to expel the Palestinians to Egypt.

US President Joe Biden says the explosion at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza appears to have been caused by Gaza terror groups and not Israel, Times of Israel reported. “I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. Based on what I’ve seen, it appears it was done by the other team, and not you,” he says, publicly endorsing Israel’s version of events.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells US President Joe Biden in joint statements, “I want to thank you for coming here today and for the unequivocal support you have given Israel during these trying times, a support that reflects the overwhelming will of the American people."

Expressing shock over the tragic loss of lives in an attack on a hospital in Gaza, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said civilian casualties in the ongoing conflict were a matter of serious concern and those involved should be held responsible. According to media reports, the Hamas group said a massive explosion at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza killed hundreds of people Tuesday. Hamas attributed the blast to an Israeli air strike, but the Israeli military said it was not involved and the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.

US President Joe Biden has just arrived in Tel Aviv where he is scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the family members of those killed in war.

The US State Department has raised the travel advisory for Lebanon, urging people not to travel to the country “due to the unpredictable security situation related to rocket, missile, and artillery exchanges between Israel and Hizballah or other armed militant factions.”

Leaders of Western intelligence services said they are attuned to the potential fallout in their home countries of the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israel.
Representatives from intelligence agencies from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia — a coalition known as the “Five Eyes” — convened in California to discuss Chinese economic espionage. But the meeting unfolded against the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East.

Jordan has called off a four-way summit scheduled for Wednesday with US President Joe Biden and other leaders, the country’s foreign minister told state-run television.
Ayman Safadi told al-Mamlaka TV that the war between Israel and Hammas was “pushing the region to the brink” and the summit would be postponed.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group says its fighters have hit an Israeli Merkava tank with an anti-tank missile, inflicting casualties among the troops. The group said the attack early Wednesday targeted an Israeli army position across the border from the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. The Israeli army said it is checking reports that an anti-tank missile was fired from Lebanon.

The 22 Arab countries at the United Nations joined in demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza following the devastating explosion and fire at a Gaza City hospital.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, said Arab Group members are “outraged by this massacre” and also united in demanding the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid and preventing “forcible displacement” of Palestinians.

The Palestinain Islamic Jihad group denied Israel’s claim that it was behind the deadly blast at Al-Ahli hospital. It accused Israel of “trying hard to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed.”
“The accusations promoted by the enemy are baseless,” Islamic Jihad said, adding that the group “does not use places of worship or public facilities, especially hospitals, as military centers or weapons stores.”

Palestinians desperate for water lined up to fill bottles and large jugs Tuesday at a desalination plant in Gaza.
Children and men took turns using a hose in Nusairat to fill containers that they hauled away using bicycles, a wheelchair and a cart pulled by a donkey.

The Israeli military says it had no involvement in an explosion that killed hundreds of people at a Gaza City hospital and that the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.

 Amid US President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, the IDF announced the creation of a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza where international aid will be provided, after days of negotiations with Egypt, the US and others to create a safe zone for fleeing Gazans.