UN warns of horrific consequences for displaced families
‘Genocide in Gaza exposes Europe’s failure to act and speak with one voice’: Top EU official
Monitoring Desk
GAZA/PARIS: Israeli forces are intensifying their attacks on the outskirts of Gaza City, residents say, as the military steps up preparations for a ground offensive to conquer it.
Hospitals said women and children were among more than 30 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in the city, most of them in the north and west.
The Israeli military’s chief of staff vowed to “continue striking Hamas’s centres of gravity until it is defeated” and its hostages freed.
The UN and aid groups said the Israeli operations were already having “horrific humanitarian consequences” for displaced families sheltering in the city, which is home to a million people and where a famine was declared last month.
Meanwhile, Israeli protesters took part in what they called a “day of disruption” to press their government to immediately agree a deal that would end the war in return for the release of all 48 Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
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Hospital officials said Israeli strikes and gunfire across the Gaza Strip had killed at least 46 people since midnight.
Gaza City’s Shifa hospital said it had received the bodies of 21 people, including five killed when an Israeli warplane targeted an apartment in the western Fisherman’s Port area.
One of the strikes killed the parents and two sisters of three-year-old Ibrahim al-Mabhuh, his grandmother said.
Meanwhile, European Commission’s Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera on Thursday called Israel’s war on Gaza “genocide” and criticized Europe’s inability to act with unity on the matter.
“The genocide in Gaza exposes Europe’s failure to act and speak with one voice, even as protests spread across European cities and 14 UN Security Council members call for an immediate ceasefire,” Ribera told students in her address at the Sciences Po university in Paris.
Answering a student’s question on the issue, Ribera stressed that the Gaza war is a “real test, not only for Europeans but for the world as a whole.”
Ribera voiced frustration over the EU’s inability to respond decisively, but urged continued efforts to press for peace.
“It is very frustrating to see that we still have difficulties to come up in a united manner, and I am among those feeling this frustration,” she said.
The executive vice president added that despite slow progress, “we should manage to keep on working, not to accept frustration, but to keep on fighting for the ceasefire, for the liberation of hostages, for the protection of civilians and the media, and for the recovery of what should be normal life for the people.”
While this marks the strongest condemnation yet from an EU official, the European Commission itself does not officially define the Gaza war as “genocide.”
Israel has killed more than 63,000 people in Gaza since October 2023, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the enclave, and forced multiple migrations. A global hunger monitor says parts of the enclave are now suffering from famine.
