The collapse of aid delivery to Gaza as Israel invades Rafah: Gaza’s most depressed population surviving humanitarian crisis and violence across the West Bank
The aid drop on Thursday is part of a dramatic and desperate effort to get food to Gaza’s starving population as Israel allows only a trickle of aid to enter through the country’s sole working land border.
The World Food Program stopped deliveries in the north because of the chaos after Palestinians emptied a convoy while it was en route.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in northern Gaza despite an Israeli order to leave in October, and many have been reduced to eating animal fodder to survive. The U.N. says 1 in 6 children under 2 in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting.
Meanwhile, U.N. officials have warned of further mass casualties if Israel follows through on vows to attack the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has taken refuge. They also say a Rafah offensive could decimate what remains of aid operations.
Violence has also surged across the West Bank since Oct. 7. The Israeli military said that two Israelis were killed in a gas station shooting on Thursday. The attacker was killed, the military said.
The war started when the Hamas launched their attack into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. After releasing most of the other hostages, Hamas and other groups are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of 30 more.
An analysis of the first weeks of death reports from the health ministry suggested reasonable data quality, and the deaths were likely to be largely civilians, according to an article published in November in the British medical journal The Lancet.
The acting director of the Al-Awda Hospital said 161 patients were wounded and most of them were shot. He said that the hospital is running out of fuel to keep operating, and that they only can do the most essential surgeries.
The collapse of aid delivery to Gaza was illustrated on Thursday by the deaths of what Gaza health authorities say were at least 100 people trying to get to a convoy of trucks delivering food near Gaza City. The Israeli military said that many Palestinians died in the crush to reach the trucks, and said its own troops opened fire on crowds moving toward them “in a manner that endangered the force.”
A Palestinian teen killed in action: Israel and Hamas must cease fire, warn the international community, and help farmers in the West Bank
Another man in the crowd — who gave only his first name, Ahmad, as he was being treated at a hospital for gunshot wounds to the arm and leg — said he waited for two hours before someone with a horse-drawn cart had room to take him to Shifa.
“Many or hundreds” were lying on the ground when medics arrived at the scene, according to the head of the ambulance service at the hospital. He said there were not enough ambulances to collect all the dead and wounded and that some were being brought to hospitals in donkey carts.
Mediators hope to reach an agreement before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts around March 10. Israel and Hamas have remained far apart in public on their demands.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan accused Israel of targeting civilians in the incident. In separate statements, they called for increased safe passages for humanitarian aid. They also urged the international community to take decisive action to pressure Israel to abide by international law and to reach an agreement for an immediate cease-fire.
He said Israeli troops opened fire on the crowd as people pulled boxes of flour and canned goods off the trucks, causing them to scatter, with some hiding under cars. After the shooting ended, people went back to the trucks. He was shot in the leg and fell over, and then a truck ran over his leg as it sped off, he said.
Kamel Abu Nahel, who was being treated for a gunshot wound at Shiufa Hospital, stated that he and others went to a distribution point because they were told there would be a delivery of food. “We’ve been eating animal feed for two months,” he said.
The Gaza armed group is fighting back: Israel wants to reopen the conflict, and the U.S. President Biden is concerned about the humanitarian crisis
The violence was quickly condemned by Arab countries, and U.S. President Joe Biden expressed concern it would add to the difficulty of negotiating a cease-fire in the nearly five-month conflict.
The World Health Organization’s director-general wrote on Thursday that most of those killed in Gaza were women and children.
The health ministry has said infants have died from dehydration and malnutrition in recent days. A physician who was in Gaza in late January told CBS’s “60 Minutes” this week that people were dying “in a fully treatable situation” because of the lack of basic medical supplies.
While Hamas was willing to make a deal with Israel, it was also ready for more fighting, the group’s political leader said on Wednesday. He urged the Palestinians to march to the Aqsa mosque compound in March in order to try to find a solution to the conflict between the two faiths.
Israel has come under growing international pressure to stop its offensive, and even President Biden, its strongest ally, has expressed growing frustration with the rising death toll and worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israeli leaders insist they will continue to fight in order to eradicate Hamas, despite the fact that hundreds of people were killed when the armed group launched an attack on Israel.
More than 30,000 people have died in the war in Gaza since October, according to the health ministry.
Alexei Navalny’s funeral draws police presence; over 100 in Gaza killed while seeking aid: A supercommunicator with organs for transplantation
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is expected to be laid to rest near his home in Moscow today. Navalny died two weeks ago under mysterious circumstances in an Arctic prison colony. His widow says that his murder was ordered by the Russian president. The Kremlin has denied the accusation and insists it has no interest in Navalny’s funeral proceedings.
Scientists are creating cloned pigs with organs designed to be used in transplants. Biotech company Revivicor Inc. says the experiments hold promise for alleviating the chronic shortage of organs for transplantation. ethical and safety concerns are raised in the research.
Have you ever had a conversation that just felt easy? Is this the case that you felt more intriguing and understood? You may have been speaking to a supercommunicator — a person who is consistently able to create authentic connections with others just by listening and talking. According to Charles Duhigg, anyone can become a supercommunicator. If you want to bonds with others in more profound ways, he has a book for you.
Source: Navalny’s funeral draws police presence; over 100 in Gaza killed while seeking aid
NPR’s quizzes on navigational tragedy: What will you learn if you don’t watch a film before Oscars?
Movies: All five films nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature are worthy of your time. But if you can’t see them before the ceremony on March 10th, NPR’s guide will tell you enough to keep up at your Oscars party.
TV: NBC’s original Shōgun from the 1980s still holds up today. The new adaptation of FX’s show is more provocative, violent, and even more thought provoking than the original. You can’t go wrong with watching both.
Books: Critic Heller McAlpin writes that Sloane Crosley’s first full-length nonfiction book, Grief is for People, is a “meditation on loss and grief that combines her verbal alacrity and mordant wit with moving descriptions that capture the ache of sleepless nights.”
Games: Part 2 of the Final Fantasy remake series is out today and hits some incredible highs. Andy Bickerton wrote that the game works. But when it drags, it really drags.
I have not gotten 100% on at least one of the weekly NPR news quizzes. My clue will help you ace it, as not every photo is related to the answer.
Source: Navalny’s funeral draws police presence; over 100 in Gaza killed while seeking aid
The Jordanian Air Base in Gaza and the U.N. Security Council’s Implications on the United Nations Mission to Palestine (UNRWA)
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The chief executive officer of Save the Children told me that less than 140 trucks made it in every day when she visited the Rafah crossing a month ago.
Israel has a permanent representative to the U.N Security Council who said the government was going to improve access to the border crossing.
Israel has said the lack of aid is due to U.N. inefficiency. Israel claims a dozen of the employees of the United Nations agency for Palestine’s UNRWA participated in the attack. The claim prompted many donors, including the United States, to withhold much-needed funding. The European Commission on Friday said it welcomed an UNRWA investigation into the allegations and was restoring funding.
One-quarter of Gaza’s population, more than 5760,000 people, are “one step away from famine” according to the UN Security Council this week.
In an attempt to help the Palestinians in Gaza, Jordan dumped waterproof boxes of food into the sea near the coast where people could retrieve them.
The flag of another Arab country was not photographed by photographers on Thursday because they said it was part of the deal that two Arab nations were making to allow air planes to land. TheQatari cargo plane that was supposed to participate in an air drop developed mechanical problems on the tarmac.
The kingdom, which for years has operated a field hospital in Gaza, has so far conducted more than 21 aid airdrops since October. It says seven airdrops taking off from Jordanian air bases have been conducted by partner countries, including France, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
On the tarmac at the King Abdullah II air base near the city of Zarka, more pallets were waiting to be loaded by Jordanian military personnel onto cargo planes for drops later in the day. The meals were similar to military meals that were ready to eat for a population with little fuel for cooking.
It was not possible to see where the food landed in northern Gaza. unpredictability is still present when it comes to the meticulously planned airdrops. The wind blew one pallet across the border into Israel while most of the others landed in northern Gaza.
Israel has not allowed foreign journalists to come to Gaza since the beginning of the war. That, along with disrupting phone and internet service, makes it extremely difficult to confirm what is happening on the ground. At the same time, Israeli strikes have killed at least 122 local journalists and media workers in Gaza since October, according to U.N. reports.
The U.K. foreign secretary, David Cameron, said in a statement Friday that in February only half the number of trucks crossed into Gaza as did in January, terming it “unacceptable.”
“It’s incredibly difficult to get supplies to people where they need it and to do that safely and securely,” Soeripto said, adding that northern Gaza was particularly hard hit by lack of food and a crumbling medical system.
Source: Aboard Jordan’s aid airdrop over Gaza, a last resort for relief to Palestinians there
The Gaza War: The Israeli Response to Hamas Attacks and the Destruction of Palestinian Life During the March 7/7 Israeli Embassy in Gaza
The Israeli military says it searches every vehicle in the country for weapons that can be used by the Palestinian group Hamas. In response to the attack, Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 30,000 civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
“This situation is the direct result of the string of unconscionable decisions taken by Israeli authorities while waging this war: a relentless bombing and shelling campaign, a complete siege imposed on the enclave, the bureaucratic hurdles and lack of security mechanisms to ensure safe food distribution from southern to northern Gaza, the systematic destruction of livelihood capacities such as farming, herding and fishing,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement after the killings near the aid trucks.
On Friday, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza posted on X (formerly Twitter) that thousands of Palestinians desperate for food gathered at the same spot where civilians were killed on Thursday.
Like many in Gaza, Salem spends much of his day walking miles trying to find food for his three children, his wife and his mother. Even for those with money, there is no food available to buy.
Most of Gaza’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by Israeli warplanes so there aren’t many ambulances, hospitals or even basic medical supplies to operate. Salem, like other casualties, was taken to hospital by horse-drawn cart.
Israel acknowledges that it opened fire in what it said was self-defense but said most of the dead were killed after being run over by the trucks or trampled in a stampede.
FLYING OVER NORTHERN GAZA STRIP — Seventeen-thousand feet in the air, Jordanian air force personnel are unhooking the chains to let pallets of wrapped cardboard boxes attached to parachutes roll out the cargo door.
The escalating tragedy in Gaza for next six months projected in first-of-its-kind effort, with comment on Spagat and Igusa
The authors were applauded by several conflict data experts who were not involved in the research. “This is a very serious effort, they’re trying their best to get it as right as they possibly can,” says Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway, University of London and chair of Every Casualty Counts, a nongovernment group that quantifies the human cost of war. “But it’s extremely complicated, and rests on assumption after assumption after assumption,” he says. “It can’t be otherwise given what they’re trying to accomplish.”
The projection does not account for Israel’s concern that a ceasefire would allow Hamas to regroup and launch more bloody attacks against Israel, resulting in more deaths beyond October 7, as well as potentially killing those still held hostage.
“We had to be very careful in defining these scenarios,” says Igusa. Existing casualty data was used to base the scenarios. But the current death toll, largely documented by the Gaza Ministry of Health, is likely an underestimate, as not all deaths are reported.
Over the next six months, they took average casualties from October 15 through January 15 and then spun them forward, similar to what happened in the early stages. For escalation, they assumed fighting from now through August would be as intense as October 11 through November 10, the worst month of the conflict so far that claimed more than 11,000 lives.
“Escalation might involve a whole lot of indiscriminate bombing in densely populated areas, or Israeli forces could decide to flood the tunnels with seawater,” he says. “We don’t actually know what any of those scenarios will mean in terms of the armed groups’ actions.”
Non-violent deaths go up when there’s a chance for interrupted medical care and epidemics. But given the authors’ assumptions, ongoing violence would account for the bulk of those excess deaths, which could reach 66,720 under the status quo scenario and 85,750 under escalation.
Estimates of the trauma deaths from Allied bombing campaigns in World War II include 25,000 deaths over two days in Dresden and 40,000 deaths in London.
Source: ‘Excess deaths’ in Gaza for next 6 months projected in first-of-its-kind effort
The Gaza War: Excess Deaths’ in Gaza for Next 6 Months Projected in First-of-its-kind Effort
This initial report is very much a first draft. Revisions of projections will bereleased in the next few months, including measures of mental health, and they will be based on experience and new data.
“I hope we’ve made clear that there’s still going to be a lot of death if there’s a ceasefire,” says Spiegel, underlining the importance of getting adequate food, water and medical attention to where it’s needed as soon as possible. Right now, blockades, continued assaults and damaged roads are preventing that aid from reaching those who need it.
“These very quantitative, evidence-based efforts are valuable,” in forcing politicians and humanitarian agencies to confront the human cost of continued fighting, says Asi. “But that’s just the first step. They have to be coupled with advocacy and political action.”
Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy. He’s been a staff writer at Grid and Science News and has contributed to NPR, Nature News, Quanta Magazine and the Dallas Morning News. He has a degree in evolutionary biology from Cornell University. You can follow him on the X and bluesky accounts.
Source: ‘Excess deaths’ in Gaza for next 6 months projected in first-of-its-kind effort
The impact of conflict on children and young people: projecting the future from a unified picture of health, malnutrition, sanitation and vaccination rates
To estimate the possible toll of an outbreak, the team combined existing data on baseline health status, malnutrition, sanitation and vaccination rates with models of infectious disease spread. Such outbreaks would be especially hard on children, the researchers say, who are more vulnerable to infections, especially when they’re malnourished. More than half a million people face catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation, according to the United Nations.
In conflict zones, overcrowding in shelters and poor sanitary conditions can lead to disease epidemics, such as the one we are currently experiencing. It’s difficult to estimate when an outbreak might happen, and that’s what the team included projections with and without epidemics.
Casualties go uncounted and injuries untreated as fighting rages on, leaving an imperfect tally of lives lost or damaged. It can take many months or even years for indirect effects of conflict to become clear, like missed cancer treatments due to hospital bombings or disease outbreak in refugee camps.
Given those assumptions, the researchers project that an additional 3,250 people will die from traumatic injuries after fighting stops. Nonviolent causes are the reason for 6,550 to 11,000 deaths after Ceasefire.
The health-care system must be thought of over time. The situation right now is dire, according to many of the trauma doctors the researchers consulted for the study. “If hospitals are functioning, a person with a head or chest wound might survive. In the current situation, it’s not certain if he or she will.
Constructing those two extreme scenarios — ceasefire and escalation — as well as a status quo middle ground, required making a lot of assumptions. To inform these assumptions, the researchers gathered up all the data they could from the conflict so far, filling in the gaps with information from past conflicts, as well as consultation with trauma doctors in Gaza.
Tak Igusa, an engineer at the university stated that they wanted to project what might happen based on scenarios that were realistic.
Ball says that he has spent his career looking back and trying to figure out the cost of war. “I’m never projecting tomorrow’s deaths, but I can imagine a whole new field coming from this [analysis]. We’re always going to be doing this from here forward.”
Other experts agree. “It’s a rigorous way of talking about the human cost of human decisions,” says Patrick Ball, director of research for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a nonprofit organization. While he stresses that the projections are speculative, that kind of speculation can be “immensely useful” in clarifying the potential costs of military action, which could both hold actors to account and help guide humanitarian action, he said.
“It shows that even if the bombing stops tomorrow, people will continue to die, not simply from the destruction of the health-care system but [loss of] access to food, water, vaccinations and shelter,” she says. This forces us to confront the true toll of what this means for the population even if the numbers aren’t perfect. We are unable to say that we did not anticipate this.
Yara Asi, a public health expert who studies the health impacts of war at the University of Central Florida and wasn’t involved in the analysis, says there is no perfect, pre-established methodology for projecting it. She says that it’s an innovative and valuable effort.
The chaos of war usually means that researchers wait until a conflict is over to pore over the data and reconstruct as complete a picture as they can of how many lives were lost and what took them.