People stand in the mostly empty Security Council chambers at United Nations headquarters, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. The United States, key allies and Arab nations are engaging in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another U.S. veto of a new U.N. resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza ahead of a long-delayed vote. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
The United Nations Security Council once again pushed back a vote for a much-delayed resolution on the war between Hamas and Israel, diplomatic sources said on Thursday, Dec 21, 2023.
The postponement to Friday came even as the United States, which has opposed a number of proposals during the resolution's drafting, said it was ready to support it in its current form.
After days of delays, the latest draft version seen by AFP calls for "urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities". It does not call for an immediate end to fighting.
Washington's UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters that "if the resolution is put forward as is, then we can support it".
She denied that the draft resolution had been watered down.
"The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group," she said.
Diplomatic wrangling at United Nations headquarters in Manhattan - causing the vote to be postponed several times this week - has come against the backdrop of deteriorating conditions in Gaza and a mounting death toll.
"It looks like the US has taken full advantage of other Council members' desire to avoid a veto. But the resulting text is starting to look very weak in many parts," said International Crisis Group analyst Richard Gowan.
The United Arab Emirates is sponsoring the resolution on the conflict which has been amended in several key areas to secure compromise, according to the draft version seen by AFP.
It demands all sides "allow and facilitate the use of all ... routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings ... for the provision of humanitarian assistance".
Israel bombed a newly reopened aid crossing on Thursday, Hamas authorities said.
Members of the 15-member council have been grappling for days to find common ground on the resolution.
'DESPERATE' SITUATION
Israel, backed by its ally the United States, has opposed the term "ceasefire", and Washington has used its veto twice to thwart resolutions opposed by Israel since the start of the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday there would be no ceasefire in Gaza until the "elimination" of Hamas.
The diplomatic tussle came as the UN's hunger monitoring system warned "every single person in war-torn Gaza is expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity in the next six weeks".
"The World Food Programme has been calling the situation desperate, and no one in Gaza is safe from starvation, they say. That's why we have all been calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire," said the UN secretary-general's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
Hamas infiltrated Israel on Oct 7 and killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel responded with a relentless air and ground campaign. The Hamas government's media office in the Gaza Strip said Wednesday at least 20,000 people have been killed, among them 8,000 children and 6,200 women.
Palestinians line up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. International aid agencies say Gaza is suffering from shortages of food, medicine and other basic supplies as a result of the two and a half month war between Israel and Hamas. (AP)
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - A report released Thursday by the UN finds that more than half a million people in Gaza are “starving” because of not enough food entering the territory since the outbreak of war more than 10 weeks ago.
“It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry,” said World Food Program chief economist Arif Husain.
He warned that if the war between Israel and Hamas continues at the same levels and food deliveries are not restored that the population could face “a full-fledged famine within the next six months.”
The report released Thursday by 23 UN and nongovernmental agencies found that the entire population in Gaza is in a food crisis, with 576,600 at catastrophic — or starvation — levels.
UN relief workers on Thursday reported “unbearable” scenes in two hospitals in northern Gaza, where bedridden patients with untreated wounds cry out for water, the few remaining doctors and nurses have no supplies, and bodies are lined up in the courtyard — signs of the worsening humanitarian crisis after 10 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas.
The relief workers spoke after delivering supplies a day earlier to Ahli and Shifa hospitals, which are located in the heart of the north Gaza battle zone where Israeli troops have demolished vast swaths of the city while fighting Hamas militants.
Bombardment and fighting continued Thursday, but with Gaza’s Internet and other communications cut off for a second straight day, details on the latest violence could largely not be confirmed.
Israel says it is in the final stages of clearing out Hamas militants from northern Gaza, but that months of fighting lie ahead in the south. The war sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 rampage and hostage-taking in Israel has killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians. Some 1.9 million Gaza residents — more than 80 percent of the population — have been driven from their homes.
With supplies to Gaza cut off except for a small trickle, the World Food Program has said 90 percent of the population is regularly going without food for a full day.
A blast Thursday morning hit the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into Gaza, forcing the UN to stop its pickups of aid there, according to Juliette Touma, spokesperson of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. At least four people were killed, the nearby hospital reported.
Israel had begun allowing aid to enter Gaza through Kerem Shalom only days earlier for the first time in the war, under pressure from the United States to ensure more help gets to Palestinians. Palestinian authorities blamed Israel for the blast, but its cause could not immediately be confirmed.
Only nine of Gaza’s 36 health facilities are still partially functioning — and all are located in the south, the World Health Organization said.
In the north over recent weeks, Israeli forces have raided a series of health facilities, detaining men for interrogation and expelling others. In other facilities, patients who are unable to be moved remain along with skeleton staff who watch over them but can do little beyond first aid, according to UN and health officials.
Ahli Hospital is “a place where people are waiting to die,” said Sean Casey, a member of the WHO team that visited the two hospitals Wednesday. Five remaining doctors and five nurses along with around 80 patients remain in Ahli, he said.
All of the hospital buildings are damaged except two buildings were patients are now being kept — the orthopedics ward and a church on the grounds, he said. He described entering the compound, strewn with debris, and a crater from recent shelling in the courtyard. Bodies were lined up nearby, but doctors said it was too unsafe to move them with fighting still outside, he said.
Hamas fired a large barrage of rockets at central Israel on Thursday, showing its military capabilities remain formidable. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, but the rocket attack set off air raid sirens in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
Hamas militants have put up stiff resistance lately against Israeli ground troops, and its forces appear to remain largely intact in southern Gaza, despite more than 2 1/2 months of heavy aerial bombardment across the territory.
Israel has vowed to continue the offensive until it destroys Hamas’ military capabilities and returns scores of hostages captured by Palestinian militants during their Oct. 7 rampage. Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people that day, mostly civilians, and captured around 240 others.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has continued to support Israel’s campaign while also urging greater efforts to protect civilians.
But in some of the toughest American language yet, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said “it’s clear that the conflict will move and needs to move to a lower intensity phase.” The US wants Israel to shift to more targeted operations aimed at Hamas leaders and the tunnel network.
UN Security Council members are negotiating an Arab-sponsored resolution to halt the fighting in some way to allow for an increase in desperately needed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.
A vote on the resolution, first scheduled for Monday, was pushed back again on Wednesday in the hopes of getting the US to support it or allow it to pass after it vetoed an earlier cease-fire call.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Tuesday the death toll since the start of the war had risen to more than 19,600. It does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
Israel’s military says 137 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. Israel says it has killed some 7,000 militants, without providing evidence. It blames civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying it uses them as human shields when it fights in residential areas.
This week, the Pentagon proclaimed the launch of a naval operation in the Gulf of Aden, purportedly meant to curb the recent string of attacks by the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement on Israeli-linked cargo vessels there.
The US-led Prosperity Guardian military operation was launched after the Houthis started attacking cargo ships either owned by or linked to Israeli entities in response to Tel Aviv's brutal military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
At this time it remains unclear how exactly this hastily assembled flotilla is going to combat the Houthis, seeing how attacks against ground targets in Yemen may expand the ongoing conflict in the country and, as one scholar put it, “basically open up Pandora's box.”
Commenting on this situation, journalist and author Jon Jeter praised the Houthis' actions, arguing that they are essentially making Israeli “settler occupation of Palestine ungovernable.”
“What they're [Houthis] doing is bold, and they've been victimized by settler colonialism as much as anyone,” Jeter said on Sputnik podcast Critical Hour. “To think that's such a sign of things to come, I just couldn't be more impressed and admire the Houthis more than I do now because of what they're doing.”
He also addressed the actions of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement which started launching attacks against Israeli forces in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance to Tel Aviv's invasion of the Gaza Strip.
According to Jeter, what the Houthis and Hezbollah are doing “is really heartening at this really dark time in human history.”
The death toll from the shooting in Charles University in Prague has reached 15 and at least 24 people have been injured, Czech police chief Martin Vondracek said on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, the police said that the shooter that opened fire at the faculty of philosophy of Charles University in central Prague has been neutralized and there were 10 people killed and about 30 injured. Later, Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda told reporters that the shooter committed suicide while trying to escape from the police.
"We know that more than 15 people died as a result of this tragic event. At least 24 people were injured," Vondracek told the Czech broadcaster CT24.
Czech President Petr Pavel said on social media he was shocked by the tragedy that befell one of Europe's oldest universities. He expressed deep condolences to the victims’ relatives.
Prime Minister Petr Fiala said he had cut short his trip to the country’s east and was returning to Prague where he would chair an extraordinary cabinet meeting. The government said the meeting was scheduled for 9 p.m. local time (20:00 GMT).
After a shooting has been reported, the police said that they were are operating on Jan Palach Square in the center of Prague.
The entire area around Jan Palach Square has been closed off by the police, traffic has been halted, and trams and buses are being redirected.
The square is home to several educational institutions, including the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University, the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design.
Prague’s Charles University shooter neutralized — police
The person that opened fire at Prague’s Charles University has been neutralized, the police said on the X platform, adding that there are casualties and dozens of injured.
"The shooter has been neutralized! The [Department of Philosophy] building has been evacuated. There are several casualties and dozens on injured," the statement says.
According to the seznam.cz website, the attacker was killed during the police operation.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses say on social media that the shooter was armed with a "long-barrel firearm." They say that the shooting in the Department building lasted for a long time.
Department employees and students said that, after the shooting started, they locked themselves in the rooms that they were in. In the meantime, the criminal was moving through the corridors, shooting everyone he met.
Last week, another US mercenary found out the hard way that traveling to Ukraine to fight on the side of the Kiev regime can drastically shorten one’s lifespan.
Ethan Hertweck, a 21-year old ex-US Marine-turned-mercenary from California, has been killed while fighting on the side of Kiev regime near Adveyevka, a city in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The US gun-for-hire arrived in Ukraine in mid-2023 as an instructor with a Ukraine-based private military outfit called Trident Defense Initiative, only to be later spotted fighting as part of the 131st Recon Battalion.
Following the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, hundreds of mercenaries from North America and Europe flocked to Kiev’s banners, lured by the promise of blood money - heedless of Russia’s warnings that foreign mercs will return home in body bags.
Months later, the luckiest and smartest of these rent-a-thugs saw the writing on the wall and fled to wherever they came from, while many of the others met their end at the hands of Russian troops.
Whether they try to attack or retreat, one thing remains constant for the Kiev regime forces in the Ukrainian conflict zone: they incessantly get pounded by Russian artillery.
A short video shared online this week by the Russian Ministry of Defense offered a glimpse into the day-to-day operations of Russian artillery – a branch of Russia’s Armed Forces whose prowess became an unpleasant surprise for Ukrainian generals and NATO strategists.
The video features an interview with the commander of an artillery crew operating a howitzer called "Natasha" (named after the commander's wife) that recently wiped out several Ukrainian command posts and infantry units in the Kupyansk sector.
Ukraine loses 800 troops per day – ex-NATO officer
Around 800 Ukrainian troops are being killed and wounded daily amid the conflict with Russia, retired German Air Force Colonel and prominent military analyst Ralph D. Thiele has claimed, without revealing his sources.
This means that Kiev needs to recruit more than 20,000 soldiers every month in order to replace its dead and injured, Thiele, who, among other things, used to serve in the personal staff of NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, stressed in an opinion piece for Focus magazine on Wednesday.
Ukraine also requires additional personnel to be able to rotate its troops on the frontline, so that “exhausted soldiers” may recover and units may replenish their material supplies, he wrote.
According to Thiele, who now heads the Political-Military Society, EuroDefense (Germany) and StratByrd Consulting think tanks, “the highly motivated defense” and the counteroffensive, which he described as “a thing of the past,” came at a “high price” for Ukraine.
Kiev’s manpower and hardware are “significantly worn out,” he said. “Western weapons systems are not miracle weapons and are wearing out,” the analyst added.
The worsening situation on the battlefield and decreasing Western support for Kiev are “eating away at the morale” of the Ukrainian troops, who “will have to save ammunition in a war of attrition and endure slaughter at the front without rest and without a greater sense of achievement,” Thiele stressed.
Russia has also lost “a large number of soldiers and huge amounts of material” during the conflict, but “it has much more of both than Ukraine,” he argued.
“Step by step, Russia’s superiority in the conflict with Ukraine is becoming more visible,” the analyst acknowledged. Moscow’s "strategy of attrition" is “taking effect” in terms of personnel, material, ammunition and morale, he said.
Thiele’s number of 800 Ukrainian soldiers being lost per day appears to be higher than the one announced by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu at the expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry’s Board on Tuesday. According to Shoigu, some 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded since the start of the fighting in late February 2022. This means that, according to Russian figures, Kiev’s daily losses stand at around 600 servicemen.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who chaired the meeting, stressed that “we can say with confidence that our troops have the initiative” on the frontline with Ukraine. “In essence, we are doing what we consider necessary, what we want. Wherever… commanders decide active defense is best, it takes place. And where it is needed, we improve our positions,” Putin explained.
