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More than two dozen Western countries, including Britain, France, Australia, and Canada, along with the European Union, have issued a joint statement calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza.
They assert that civilian suffering has “reached new depths” as Israel’s military expanded its operations into the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah.
Escalation and Humanitarian Crisis
The plea comes after over 21 months of conflict that have led to catastrophic humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s more than two million residents.
On Monday, Deir el-Balah experienced intense shelling after Israel’s military warned of imminent action in an area where it had not previously operated.
The day prior, residents in central Gaza were ordered to evacuate, with initial UN estimates indicating between 50,000 and 80,000 people were in the affected zone.
Residents like Abdullah Abu Saleem, 48, described “huge and powerful explosions shaking the area as if it were an earthquake” overnight, causing extreme worry about a potential ground operation in Deir el-Balah and surrounding camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Credit: Al Jazeera
Aid Condemnation and Displacement
The Western nations also strongly criticised Israel’s aid delivery methods in Gaza, calling them “dangerous, fueling instability, and depriving Gazans of human dignity.”
The UN has recorded 875 fatalities among those attempting to obtain food since late May, when Israel began easing a more than two-month aid blockade.
The joint statement condemned “the drip-feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”
Plumes of dark smoke were visible over Deir el-Balah, and Gaza’s civil defence agency reported receiving calls from families trapped by Israeli tank shelling. Since the war began, nearly all of Gaza’s population has been displaced multiple times.
The latest evacuation orders mean that 87.8% of the territory is now under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones.
Hostage Concerns and Casualties
The families of hostages held in Gaza expressed being “shocked and alarmed” by the evacuation orders for parts of Deir el-Balah, demanding clarification from Israeli authorities on how the offensive would not endanger the remaining 49 hostages. Israel’s military states that 27 of these hostages are dead.
Gaza’s health ministry reports that Israel’s military campaign has killed 59,029 Palestinians, mostly civilians.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,219 deaths, predominantly civilians.
