Palestine requests Security Council session over Israeli attacks on central Gaza

GAZA: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has instructed Palestine’s envoy to the United Nations (UN) to request an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss the repercussions of the Israeli attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, the Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported on Saturday.

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Abbas is engaged in intensive diplomatic efforts with Arab and international stakeholders to convene the emergency session, the aim of which is to address the “ongoing Israeli aggression” against the Palestinian people and compel Israel to comply with the resolutions of international legitimacy, WAFA said.

Abbas emphasized the urgent need for international intervention to halt the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank, adding that Israel continues to exploit “international silence and US support” to “perpetrate crimes,” according to the report.

On Saturday, at least 210 Palestinians were killed and more than 400 others injured in Israeli airstrikes on the Nuseirat camp, according to a statement released by the media office of the Hamas-run government in Gaza.

The casualties have been taken to the Al Awda Health Center in Nuseirat and al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

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Since its onset last October, the deadly conflict between Israel and Gaza-ruling Hamas has led to 36,801 Palestinians killed and 83,680 others injured in the strip, local health authorities said in an update earlier in the day.

The Israeli army, police, and intelligence body Shin Bet said in a joint statement that the airstrikes on Nuseirat had freed four Israeli hostages from two separate areas.

Daniel Hagari, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, stated that the four hostages were located in proper medical condition in two buildings at the heart of Nuseirat refugee camp.

Following the rescue of the four, 120 Israeli hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, with 43 of them considered by Israel as dead.

The Israeli army had killed several other hostages held there during its operation to release the four hostages, Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades said on Saturday.

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In a statement, Al-Qassam denounced the Israeli military operation in the Nuseirat area in central Gaza as “a complex war crime,” saying “the first to be harmed by it” were Israeli hostages.

“The operation will pose a great danger to the enemy’s prisoners and will have a negative impact on their conditions and lives,” Abu Obaida, spokesperson for Al-Qassam, said in the statement.