Israel-Palestine live: Week three ends with over 7,000 Palestinians killed

Israeli forces have shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian teenager, Eid Nabil Qasim Mari, in the occupied West Bank City of Jenin, during an early morning raid.

The total number of people killed in the morning raid has now risen to six, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Four of those killed were from Jenin, one was from Qalqilya, and one from Qalandia. 
 

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said that Israel is exercising a form of collective punishment in Gaza and is “targeting civilians in hospitals and places of worship,” in a live event from Qatar’s Doha. 

He said that “ground invasion in Gaza will turn the fighting into a massacre,” and that “those supporting Israel’s actions under the pretence of solidarity are accomplices to its crimes". 

“What Israeli occupation forces are exercising is a collective punishment against all the residents of Gaza. Gazans cannot be uprooted from their homeland,” he said. 
 

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has called for an end to aggression in order to pave the way for an urgent ceasefire. 

“The only way to reach a peaceful solution is to keep communication channels open,” he said in a speech at a live event in Doha. 

He also used his speech to condemn Israel’s “collective punishment policy on Gaza,” and the targeting of civilian buildings, including schools and hospitals. 

He emphasised the importance of coordination with regional partners to de-escalate the crisis. 

Palestinians in Gaza are facing a severe water crisis since Israel cut off all water to the besieged enclave on 9 October.

This decision has exacerbated the crisis in an already water-stressed area.

Less than four percent of freshwater is now drinkable and the surrounding sea is polluted by sewage, according to Oxfam.

The closure of Gaza’s only functioning power plant has compounded the problem, with the water utility warning that it does not have the fuel to run water and sanitation facilities when the power is off.

This means people in Gaza have been forced to drink dirty, salty water, sparking concerns of a health crisis and fears that people could start dying from dehydration.

Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN: “The only water people have is essentially non-potable seawater mixed with sewage.”

Other accounts report that Palestinians are being forced to drink unclean water intended for farming or use old, dirty wells.  

Human Rights Watch has called Israel's blocking off the water supply in Gaza a form of punishment. 

Around 600,000 internally displaced people are sheltering in 150 facilities of the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (Unrwa) in Gaza, the agency said.

Unrwa also said that at least 40 of their installations have been impacted by Israeli bombardment on the besieged enclave. 

​​"Our shelters are four times over their capacities - many people are sleeping in the streets as current facilities are overwhelmed," the agency added.
 

The following death tolls in Palestine, Israel and Lebanon are accurate as of 9.20am GMT on 25 October.

They are sourced from Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese and Hezbollah officials. 

Palestine

Gaza
Killed: 6,055 (2,360+ children, at least 1,292 women)*
Wounded: 16,297 
*Data on combatant casualties not yet available 

West Bank and East Jerusalem
Killed: 103 (at least 30 children, one woman) 
Wounded: 1,400 

Israel
Killed: 1,400 (769 civilians, 307 soldiers, 57 police officers)*
Wounded: 5,000+
*Data on children and women casualties not yet available 

Lebanon
Killed: 49 (3 civilians, 40 Lebanese fighters, 6 Palestinian fighters) 
Wounded: Data not yet available 

Around 7,000 patients and wounded Palestinians are facing imminent death with Gaza hospitals set to collapse amid lack of fuel, the spokesman for the Palestinian ministry of health told Al Jazeera.

Doctors and health officials have been warning for days that fuel is set to run out completely by Thursday. 

They say this will lead to the instant death of thousands of people, including newborn babies in incubators, wounded people in ICU units, and kidney dialysis patients, amongst others. 

Palestinians in Gaza’s Khan Younis woke up to total destruction, and are searching through the rubble for the bodies of loved ones. 

Israeli air strikes targeted residential neighbourhoods in the besieged enclave, leaving many residential towers completely levelled. 

Israeli attacks on military positions in southwest Syria on Wednesday killed eight soldiers and wounded seven more, the Syrian state news agency Sana reported.

Citing a military source, Sana said Israel's "aerial aggression" targeted a number of military positions near the southwestern city of Daraa. The strike also caused material damage, it reported.

Israel's military said earlier that its jets had struck Syrian army infrastructure and mortar launchers early on Wednesday in what it described as a response to rocket launches from Syria toward Israel.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said that Israel will be denying visas to UN officials after a comment made by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, where he said “it is important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum".

The comments by Guterres were said in a UN Security Council meeting. 

Erdan told the Israeli Army Radio that “due to his remarks, we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives".

“We have already refused a visa for Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths,” Erdan said. “The time has come to teach them a lesson."

Palestine’s Ministry of Health says that at least 80 people were killed in overnight Israeli air strikes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

According to the statement, “hundreds have been wounded in massacres committed by occupation raids".
 

Good morning MEE readers.

The number of Palestinians killed from Israel's air strikes on Gaza over the past 24 hours is still unclear, as at the time of writing this, more news is coming out regarding the death tolls from different bombings.

Israel's continued bombardment and destruction are continuing to be met with opposition from different corners of the world. On Tuesday night, more than 100 experts on Middle East policy signed an open letter addressed to western countries, urging an immediate ceasefire to the conflict.

Here's what you may have missed over the past few hours:

• A new visual investigation from The New York Times has cast doubt on a highly publicised piece of evidence cited by Israeli officials to claim that it was a fallen Palestinian rocket that caused the explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

• More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, and dozens more have been arrested in nightly raids.

• Israel launched an air strike on Jenin again on Wednesday morning, killing several Palestinians.

We're working hard to provide you with up-to-date information around the clock, and are going to continue doing that throughout the day. You can also find our coverage across Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.

The number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since 7 October has now reached 100, the health ministry said on Wednesday morning.

The ministry said the number was reached after three people were killed by Israeli forces in Jenin, one person was killed in Qalqilya, and another Palestinian died after being wounded a few days ago in the Tulkarm refugee camp.

Florida’s university system chancellor, working with Governor Ron DeSantis, ordered universities in the state to shut down chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student group that has chapters in colleges across the country.

The State University System of Florida said SJP had to be dismantled as part of a "crackdown" on campus demonstrations that the chancellor claims provide "harmful support for terrorist groups."

"Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated," the system's Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote in a memo to university leaders.

The move makes Florida the first US state to outlaw the student group and is part of a larger crackdown on students and academics who have shown criticism of Israel amid the ongoing war.

A new report from The New York Times' visual investigations team has found that the projectile captured on video before the explosion of al-Ahli Arab Hospital was launched from Israel and likely unrelated to the blast.

The investigation contradicts the most public piece of evidence Israeli officials have cited to say that a failed rocket launched from Gaza caused the hospital explosion, which killed nearly 500 Palestinians.

On social media and in media interviews, Israeli officials cited footage from Al Jazeera to claim that the blast was caused by a rocket from the armed Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which it said malfunctioned midair and exploded at the same time as the hospital blast.

However, the newspaper's investigation concluded that the missile from the video was launched from Israel, not Gaza. It also found that the projectile from the Al Jazeera footage exploded two miles away from the hospital.

The New York Times said that its investigation doesn't offer a conclusion as to what caused the explosion, and also said that a failed Palestinian rocket causing the blast "remains plausible".