Live: Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 26,000

Israeli shelling on an ambulance in the occupied West Bank Tulkarm refugee camp wounded two paramedics, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said. 

The nature of the attack was not immediately clear.

Israeli forces stormed the Tulkarm refugee camp on Wednesday and killed four Palestinians in a drone strike. 

Israeli forces destroyed graves in a Khan Younis cemetery during an overnight ground assault. According to local media, some bodies were stolen from the graves.  

As the brutal Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip rages on, pregnant Palestinian women are grappling with the dual challenges of giving birth in a warzone and enduring the post-natal hardships that follow, including lack of medicine, food and water, amid constant bombardment.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and 180 new births per day. 

Approximately 15 percent of these expectant mothers are predicted to face complications related to pregnancy or childbirth and require additional care.

Such care, which should normally be routine, is now a luxury for many mothers, with Israel blocking aid deliveries into Gaza and hospitals constantly being targeted.

Mothers are suffering acute mental distress, trying to keep a baby alive during a war that has killed tens of thousands of people, including more than 10,000 children.

Fedaa Issa is a 28-year-old mother of two who lived in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza. Before the conflict started, she awaited excitedly the arrival of her new baby girl Aya. 

“We counted down the days before Aya's arrival… my daughter Malak was so excited to have a sister to play with. However, the Israeli assault destroyed our dream,” Issa said.

“The happiness turned into worry and fear. Pregnancy became a burden on my heart.”

Read more: Dead bodies, hospitals under attack and no medicine: The difficulties of birth in Gaza 

The Jordanian army said on Wednesday its military field hospital in the city of Khan Younis in Gaza was badly damaged as a result of Israeli shelling in the vicinity.

In a statement, the army said it held Israel responsible for a "flagrant breach of international law".

Reporting by Reuters

The liver infection hepatitis A is spreading in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian health ministry has said. 

The overcrowding in temporary shelters and lack of sanitary conditions are driving the spread of the vaccine-preventable disease, it added. 

According to the World Health Organization, hepatitis A is an inflammation of the liver that can be transmitted through "ingestion of contaminated food and water or through direct contact with an infectious person".

A senior Hamas official said a Qatari-brokered deal to deliver medicine to Israeli captives in Gaza will include a boost in humanitarian aid for Palestinians in exchange. 

Musa Abu Marzouk, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said on social media platform X that for each box of medicine designated for Israelis, 1,000 boxes will be given to Palestinians across the Gaza Strip. 

More food and aid will also be delivered to the besieged enclave as part of the deal. 

Abu Marzouk added the deal stipulates there would be no Israeli security inspections on the medication shipments, which are set to be delivered by Qatar. 

He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of "lying again" about the details of the deal, saying the quantity, distribution and delivery mechanism were determined by Hamas. 

An Israeli air strike in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm killed four Palestinians on Wednesday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society has said. 

It is the second air strike in the West Bank within hours after a drone strike earlier killed three Palestinians in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. 

The Tulkarm attack comes amid an ongoing military raid in the city. 

According to the Times of Israel, the air strike was carried out against "suspects shooting and hurling explosive devices at troops operating in Tulkarem". 

Israeli forces have killed at least 163 Palestinians and wounded 350 more across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the health ministry there said on Wednesday. 

This brings the death toll since 7 October to at least 24,448, with 61,504 wounded and more than 7,000 missing who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble. 

Overall, four percent of Gaza's population has been killed, wounded or gone missing in three months of bombardment. 

The majority of victims are children and women, according to health officials.

A Palestinian taking shelter with his family in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis described a night of terror and chaos as heavy Israeli air strikes pummelled areas nearby. 

Mohammad Rami, a father of three, said many families taking shelter in tents in the hospital's yards and the nearby Austrian district were forced to flee late at night, fearing the hospital would be raided or bombed.    

"It was very cold and the bombing was terrifying," Rami told Middle East Eye. 

"Some went to schools but many spent the night on the streets."

Israeli tanks, which reached meters away from the Jordanian field hospital near the Nasser hospital, retreated on Wednesday morning, according to eyewitnesses.

Residents say a cemetery in the Austrian district was razed in their wake, with bodies stolen by soldiers. 

However, artillery shelling and gunfire continue to be heard in Al-Manara and Batn Al-Sameen neighbourhoods, Rami said. 

Translation: The occupation army commits a new crime in the Gaza Strip... Soldiers exhume graves in the Austrian neighbourhood in Khan Yunis

Israel will not be able to eradicate Hamas and, if troops stay in Gaza for months, then hundreds of soldiers will die, a former Israeli general has warned. 

In an op-ed published on Haaretz, Major General (res) Itzhak Brik said it will take many months and even years to fulfil the goals set by the government. 

"What is the point of continuing to fight inside Khan Younis and achieving tactical achievements that will not collapse Hamas or eradicate its rule?" said Brik, a long-time critic of army preparedness. 

He added that if combat continues for the next six months in Khan Younis and the central Gaza refugee camps, then hundreds more soldiers will die and thousands will be wounded.

"It is most likely that Hamas will not be eradicated and will continue to control the Rafah camps and have free access to the north of the Gaza Strip and its centre through hundreds of kilometres of tunnels that will take us years to destroy if indeed we succeed in doing so."

Israeli forces killed two Palestinian girls early on Wednesday in air strikes on a home in the Shabora refugee camp in Rafah. 

Masa Shoman, one of the two children, was taken to her burial by her grieving father.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers,

It's just after 8 am in Palestine and Israel. Here are the latest updates:

• Israeli jets and tanks heavily bombed Khan Younis late on Tuesday, with attacks reaching the vicinity of Nasser hospital 

• In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli drone struck a car in Nablus, killing at least one person. Israeli forces also raided Tulkarm. 

• Two Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in northern Gaza on Tuesday, the army said. 

• The US Senate has rejected a resolution that would have frozen security aid to Israel unless the State Department produces a report within 30 days examining whether Israel committed human rights violations in its war on Gaza.

The Israeli army said two soldiers were killed in fighting on Tuesday in the northern Gaza Strip, as troops renewed heavy attacks in the area. 

This brings the death toll among Israeli forces to over 600 since 7 October, with nearly 200 killed since the start of the ground operation in Gaza. 

Several Palestinians are feared dead in an Israeli drone strike in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed that at least one person has been confirmed dead in the attack.

The US Senate rejected a resolution on Tuesday that would have frozen security aid to Israel unless the State Department produces a report within 30 days examining whether Israel committed human rights violations in its war on Gaza.

Seventy-two senators voted to set the resolution aside, versus 11 who backed it, easily clearing the simple majority needed to kill the resolution in the 100-member chamber.

The vote was forced by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats. While the resolution was handily defeated, it reflected growing concern among some of President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats, especially on the left, over the supply of US weapons to Israel despite the Gaza conflict's steep toll on Palestinian civilians.

"We must ensure that U.S. aid is being used in accordance with human rights and our own laws," Sanders said in a speech urging support, lamenting what he described as the Senate's failure to consider any measure looking at the war's effect on civilians.

The White House had said it opposed the resolution, which could have paved the way toward the imposition of conditions on security assistance to Israel.

Reporting by Reuters