January 27, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza is running out of its supply of blood, anesthesia and other stress medications, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health said Saturday.

The shortage of blood is “severe and dangerous,” ministry spokesperson Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra warned in a statement.

Nasser is the main medical center in the city of Khan Younis, which has been a flashpoint area in recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. The southern city's hospital facilities have been "under siege" as the Israeli military intensifies operations there over the past week, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

The Israeli military says Hamas was operating in the area from inside the Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals. CNN cannot independently verify those claims.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Friday that it is carrying out “precise operations” against Hamas and is liaising with hospital directors in Khan Younis to ensure the hospitals remain operational. But the PRCS claimed Saturday that the IDF has not made efforts to communicate with hospital administration.

Fewer than half of the 36 hospitals in Gaza are still partially functioning, the United Nations said Thursday.

The leader of a Palestinian political party has condemned countries that are pausing aid to the main United Nations agency in Gaza, in response to claims some of its workers participated in the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, specifically called out the US, Canada, Italy and Australia in a post on social media for what he called the "shameful" decision to suspend support for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Barghouti criticized the governments taking this action despite taking "no punitive acts against Israel which killed 102 of UNRWA aid and health workers in Gaza." 

Some context: The UN said last November that at least 102 UNRWA workers had been killed in Gaza since October 7, but CNN cannot independently verify Barghouti's claim they were all killed by Israeli forces.

As of January 19, UNRWA said the death toll had increased to 151 of its workers.

The UN agency has fired staff members allegedly involved in the Hamas attacks, and said it is launching an investigation into the matter.

Israel and UNRWA have not specified the nature of the alleged involvement of the organization's employees.

Many Arab Americans and Muslim voters who have spoken to CNN say they will not vote for US President Joe Biden’s reelection efforts due to his unwavering support of Israel and failure to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. 

In the last presidential election cycle, Biden received the backing of several prominent Muslim American elected officials and community leaders. But this time around, many are skeptical – and angry.

The Abandon Biden campaign was created in Minnesota after a group of Muslim Americans demanded the president call for a ceasefire by October 31. And when Biden didn’t respond to these calls to support a permanent halt in fighting, the group vowed to campaign against him.

At least 146,620 of the 200,000 Muslim American voters in Michigan cast a ballot in the 2020 election cycle, according to an analysis by Emgage. In 2020, Biden won Michigan by three percentage points over Trump. Four years prior, Trump won the state over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by 0.2 percentage points.

Read more about the views of Muslim and Arab Americans toward the Biden campaign as the war in Gaza continues.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says its medical workers are living in a "state of terror and panic," and has once again accused Israel of besieging its headquarters and a southern Gaza hospital.

The PRCS condemned the “siege and targeting” of Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis “for the sixth consecutive day” in a statement released Saturday, calling on the international community to shield its aid workers.

The aid group called the situation part of a "series of systematic attacks" on the organization and medical facilities in the Gaza Strip. The PRCS has previously said its headquarters and the hospital are "under siege" by Israel. 

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for a response to the latest claims. It has previously claimed Hamas was operating in the area from inside the Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals.

PRCS disputed those claims Saturday as "false," and said the IDF has not made efforts to communicate with hospital administration.

CNN cannot independently verify either side's claims about the situation at the hospital due to the difficulties of reporting from the war zone.

Israeli Master Sgt. Omri Erental was kneeling at the mouth of a tunnel shaft in Gaza, standing guard while waiting for a specialized unit to arrive, when he suddenly spotted movement down below.

Other soldiers in his Israel Defense Forces combat engineering unit had already thrown two grenades into the tunnel shaft, so Erental turned his flashlight on.

The impact was a 7.62-millimeter bullet that pierced his cheek and took out a fragment of his jaw, before lodging in his neck — very close to critical nerves and arteries, according to Erental and his doctor. As Erental crawled back to safety, his fellow soldiers killed the militant who shot him from inside the tunnel, he said. 

Exposing tunnels is central to the Israeli military’s campaign against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, but the work presents big challenges and dangers. Israel uses enormous bunker-busting bombs to penetrate deep underground, targeting what it says are Hamas command centers and fighters — but these often leave gaping craters where civilian buildings once stood and can kill large numbers of civilians.

Members of Israel’s combat engineering forces also send drones, dogs and sometimes troops deep into booby-trapped tunnels in order to clear them of Hamas fighters, uncover potentially useful intelligence, and then ultimately detonate them.

Israeli officials believe that many Hamas fighters — including Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar — are surviving in sophisticated tunnels equipped with electricity, bathrooms and stocks of food and water.

Watch Jeremy Diamond's report:

The Palestine Liberation Organization called on countries halting support for the main United Nations agency in Gaza to “immediately retract their decision.”

The US, Canada, Australia and Italy each announced they have paused funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) following allegations that some of its staff members were involved in the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in Israel.

“In light of the continuing conflict and aggression against the Palestinian people,” Al-Sheikh wrote, the decision to drop funding “entails great political and relief risks.”

“This organization must be supported and not stopped from being supported and assisted by the international community,” he said. 

The PLO is recognized internationally as a representative body of the Palestinian people. 

The war between Israel and Hamas has already spilled over to the wider Middle East, with prospects of a confrontation between regional and world powers becoming ever more likely.

Across the region, the fighting has largely been confined to tit-for-tat attacks between Iran-backed militias on one side and the US, Israel and its allies on the other.

But the direct intervention of both Iran and the US in recent weeks has heightened fears that the proxy conflict between the two could turn into a direct one.

So far, the US and Iran have avoided directly confronting each other. The US has attacked Iranian-backed groups in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, while Iran-linked groups have targeted American personnel in Iraq and Syria. Tehran has also struck what it said were anti-Iran groups in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Pakistan responded with retaliatory strikes.

As tensions across the region rise, CNN takes a look at where Iran or its allies are present, where US forces are stationed and where both sides have conducted military operations since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Read the story here.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has suggested that Israel will seek to stop the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating in post-war Gaza, saying it "will not be a part of the day after."

It follows allegations that its staff members were involved in the October 7 attacks on Israel.

On Friday, an Israeli official told CNN that Israel shared information about 12 staffers allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks both with UNRWA and the US. The official did not share more specifics on the alleged actions of the 12 former staffers.

CNN has reached out to UNRWA and the Israeli authorities about the information Israel provided UNRWA and the nature of the alleged involvement of the UNRWA employees on October 7.

Israel’s relations with the UN have deteriorated in recent months, after the organization’s senior officials repeatedly condemned the country’s military approach to the war in Gaza.

It was supposed to be a safe haven – a new life for those seeking refuge from the turbulence of war.

But when tens of thousands of Ukrainians fled to Israel in the wake of Russia’s invasion, they had no idea of what the future would hold.

With men aged 18 to 60 forbidden to leave Ukraine, the refugees were mostly women, children and the elderly. Among them, four courageous teenagers who arrived alone in Israel to start a new life as a result of Moscow’s assault on their homeland on February 24, 2022.

Little more than a year and a half later, these young people found themselves immersed in another conflict, as they study at a boarding school just 8 miles from Gaza.

Read their story here.