World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during a press briefing at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on December 10, 2024. (Photo: Lian Yi/Xinhua via Getty Images)
State media reports at least four people were killed and 21 others injured.
As part of Israel’s assault on various countries across the Middle East, Israeli fighter jets on Thursday bombed multiple sites in Yemen, including Sanaa International Airport, killing multiple people and threatening the life of a leading United Nations official.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and colleagues were at the airport, wrapping up a trip “to negotiate the release of U.N. staff detainees and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in Yemen,” when the attack occurred, the agency leader said on social media. “We continue to call for the detainees’ immediate release.”
“As we were about to board our flight from Sanaa, about two hours ago, the airport came under aerial bombardment. One of our plane’s crew members was injured,” Tedros explained, noting the reported deaths. “The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge—just a few meters from where we were—and the runway were damaged. We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave. My U.N. and WHO colleagues and I are safe. Our heartfelt condolences to the families whose loved ones lost their lives in the attack.”
According to The New York Times: “At least four people were killed and 21 others injured in the attack on Thursday after Israel struck the international airport in Sana and the city of al Hodeida, the Saba state news agency said, citing Yemen’s Health Ministry. The report could not be independently verified.”
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, told the Times that Israel had no prior knowledge that the WHO leader would be at the airport during the attack. “We didn’t know,” he said. “We wish him well.”
It's hard to imagine the Israelis didn't know Tedros & his staff were at the airport before their strike. Either this proves their incompetence or indifference in targeting civilians & NGOs (thus undermining their claims of judicious targeting), or prove they do it deliberately https://t.co/p4F7Uwe32J
The IDF said in a statement posted on social media that “fighter jets conducted intelligence-based strikes” with approval from Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The targets that were struck by the IDF include military infrastructure used by the Houthi terrorist regime for its military activities in both the Sanaa International Airport and the Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations,” the military continued. “In addition, the IDF struck military infrastructure in the al Hodeida, Salif, and Ras Kanatib ports on the western coast. These military targets were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials.”
Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the U.S.-armed IDF has not only decimated the Gaza Strip and killed over 45,000 Palestinians there but also ramped up strikes on other groups tied to Iran, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Additionally, Israel has exploited the recent collapse of Syrian former President Bashar al-Assad’s government, seizing more territory in that country.
“The targeting of Sanaa International Airport and other civilian infrastructure is a Zionist crime against the entire Yemeni people,” a Houthi spokesperson, Mohammed Abdulsalam, said in a statement. “If the Zionist enemy thinks that its crimes will deter Yemen from supporting Gaza, it is delusional.”
The strikes on Yemen came a day after Netanyahu said that “the Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and others have learned, and even if it takes time, this lesson will be understood across the Middle East.”
Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as a Hamas leader.
Palestinian Catholics attend Christmas mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine on December 24, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace,” said one little girl whose grandmother was killed by an Israeli sniper.
Palestinian Catholics attend Christmas mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine on December 24, 2024.
(Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Another Somber Christmas in Palestine as Gaza Genocide Continues
“I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace,” said one little girl whose grandmother was killed by an Israeli sniper.
From the illegally occupied “little town of Bethlehem” in the West Bank to a pair of churches in Gaza where Israel’s bombs and bullets have killed clerics and congregants alike, Palestinian Christians marked another somber Christmas amid a relentless Israeli assault whose victims on Wednesday included refugees sheltering in tents and medical staff and patients at a besieged hospital.
For the second year in a row, public Christmas celebrations were canceled at the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, which is built over the spot where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born.
“This should be a time of joy and celebration. But Bethlehem is a sad town in solidarity with our siblings in Gaza,” Lutheran Pastor Munther Isaac said during his Christmas sermon at a church whose nativity display again had baby Jesus lying in a pile of rubble.
“It’s hard to believe that another Christmas has come upon us and the genocide has not stopped,” Isaac added. “Decision-makers are content to let this continue. To them, Palestinians are dispensable.”
In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian Christians huddled in two churches amid ongoing attacks by Israeli forces.
“This year, we will conduct our religious rites and that’s it,” Ramez Souri told The New York Times at the St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City. “We’re still in mourning and far too sad to celebrate, or do anything except to pray for peace.”
Hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering on the grounds of the 12th century church—Gaza’s oldest—when Israeli forces bombed it in October 2023, killing 18 people including Souri’s three children and relatives of former Republican U.S. Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan.
In a pre-Christmas homily at Holy Family Church in Gaza City—Gaza’s only Catholic church— Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, told congregants, “You have become the light of our church in the entire world.”
“At Christmas, we celebrate the light and ask: Where is this light?” Pizzaballa continued. “The light is here, in this church.”
“I don’t know when or how this war will end, and every time we approach the end, it seems like we start anew,” he added. “But sooner or later, the war will end, and we must not lose hope. When the war ends, we will rebuild everything: our schools, our hospitals, and our homes. We must remain resilient and full of strength.”
Like St. Porphyrius, Holy Family has suffered a deadly Israeli attack. Last December, an Israeli sniper shot Nahida Khalil Anton, the elderly matriarch of the largest Catholic family in Gaza, as she crossed a courtyard in the church compound on her way to the bathroom. Her daughter Samar was shot in the head when she rushed out to try and help her mother.
Both women died. Seven other people were shot and wounded. Israeli soldiers and veterans have said that they were given permission and even orders to shoot anyone who moves in parts of Gaza.
"I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace." A Christian Palestinian girl in Gaza wishes for peace on Christmas Day amid Israel's war, at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.
On Sunday, Pope Francis—who in a new book called for a genocide investigation of Israel’s war on Gaza—said: “Yesterday, children have been bombed. This is cruelty; this is not war.”
The cruelty continued on Christmas as Israeli attacks throughout Gaza killed at least 13 people, according to officials. The dead include people sheltering in a tent northwest of Khan Younis, Palestine Red Crescent Society volunteer Alaa al-Derawi—who was shot in the chest while at work transporting patients—and Walaa al-Faranji, a well-known fashion designer, author, and photographer who was killed along with her husband Ahmed Salama in an airstrike on their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Local media also reported continued Israeli shelling and attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, where staff and scores of patients including premature babies have endured weeks of siege conditions.
All told, Gaza and international agencies say that at least 45,361 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and more than 107,800 others wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. At least 11,000 other Gazans are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. Millions more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Thousands more people have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Last month, the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, as well as for Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Back at St. Porphyrius, parishioners pooled what little food they could find to prepare a communal Christmas Eve meal. Although many Gazan Christians have expressed fears that their community—one of the oldest Christian communities in the world—could be wiped out by Israel’s genocidal onslaught, the holiday meal represented a faint glimmer of hope.
“We wanted to do something to show that we’re still here,” Souri explained, “despite it all.”
Pope Francis before the “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024” in the Paul VI Hall. Photo: Vatican News
Israel continues to commit massacres in Gaza, and has launched attacks on Pope Francis for speaking up in defense of the Palestinian people.
Pope Francis issued a sharp condemnation of the ongoing Israeli genocidal aggression on the Gaza strip this past weekend, just ahead of Christmas. His statements came after the Gaza Civil Defense rescue agency reported the killing of 12 people from the same family, including seven children, in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s northern city of Jabalia on Friday, December 20.
The Pontiff lamented the bombing of children in Gaza with deep sorrow during his traditional address to the cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people of the Roman Curia at the Vatican on Saturday, December 21.
“This is cruelty. This is not war. I want to say this because it touches the heart,” Pope Francis said. He also pointed out that the airstrikes had prevented the highest representative of the Catholic church in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, from entering Gaza the previous day.
Following Pope Francis’s Saturday address, the Israeli authorities allowed Pizzaballa to enter Gaza on Sunday, December 22, where he celebrated mass in the small Christian community of the Holy Family parish in Gaza City.
During a midday Angelus on Sunday, December 22, Pope Francis reiterated his repudiation of Israel’s continuous massacring of children in Gaza. “With sorrow I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty; of the children machine-gunned, the bombing of schools and hospitals…So much cruelty!”, the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State said.
On December 8, Pope Francis had issued an appeal addressing political leaders and the international community to reach a ceasefire on “all war fronts” by Christmas. “I appeal to Governments and the International Community that a ceasefire may be reached on all war fronts by the Christmas celebrations,” the appeal reads.
One day earlier, Pope Francis unveiled the annual nativity scene at the Vatican featuring baby Jesus draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, which highlighted the Holy Family’s connection to the occupied Palestinian city of Bethlehem and served as a poignant nod to the Palestinian struggle.
Last November, Pope Francis urged that allegations of a genocide in Gaza should be “carefully investigated”. “According to some experts…what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the Pontiff writes in a forthcoming book. “It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies,” he writes.
Pope Francis also calls the leader of the Catholic Church in Gaza every night to check on them and hear news of how they are surviving which inevitably gives him an intimate look into the immense suffering and difficulties faced by the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The nativity scene and Pope Francis’s call for an investigation into the Israeli genocide in Gaza were slammed by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and “Combating Antisemitism” Minister Amichai Chikli, who accused the Catholic leader of “deliberately adopting the Palestinian narrative.”
“Two weeks ago, you took part in a display that echoes the Palestinian narrative, portraying Jesus as a Palestinian Arab,” Chikli wrote in a strongly-worded letter sent to Pope Francis on Thursday, December 19. “Had this been a one-time matter, I would not have written. However, in a more severe expression, you recently insinuated that the State of Israel ‘might be’ committing genocide in Gaza,” the Israeli minister added. Chikli even went further by saying: “It is a well-known fact that Jesus was born to a Jewish mother, lived as a Jew and died as a Jew.”
Chikli’s statements once again reveal the paradox of the Israeli rhetoric, as people of the Christian community were among the first civilians to be crushed by the Israeli war machine in Gaza. In October 2023, St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City, which is believed to be the third oldest church in the world, was bombed by Israeli warplanes while providing shelter for an estimated 500 Palestinians, most of whom were Christians. 16 Palestinian Christians were killed and dozens others injured in the assault, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip.
In May 2024, the Palestinian State Minister of Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin revealed during her meeting with a delegation from Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) that 3% of Gaza’s Christians were killed in the Israeli genocidal aggression on Gaza since October 7, 2023.
“The Israeli war has resulted in the death of 3% of Gaza’s Christians and the destruction of churches amid restrictions (on Christians) in the West Bank,” Shahin stated. Meanwhile, Gaza’s government media office estimated that at least three churches were destroyed in Israeli attacks in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Israel’s targeting of Christians and their holy sites is yet another evidence of its systematic ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous Palestinian people regardless of their faith.
For the second year, Palestinians are canceling Christmas celebrations to show solidarity with Gaza. “We chose to restrict Christmas celebrations to prayers as a stand against the oppression faced by Gaza and all of Palestine”, Bethlehem Mayor Anton Salman said a couple of days prior to the Christmas eve.
People check the damage outside the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, following Israeli strikes around the medical complex on December 6, 2024, as the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group continues. (Photo: -/AFP via Getty Images)
“If Kamal Adwan Hospital is decommissioned, there will be no way of preserving conditions of life to the remaining 75,000+ civilians in north Gaza,” the hospital’s director said.
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday ordered one of the last partly operating hospitals in northern Gaza to shutter and evacuate, even as hospital staff say there are not enough ambulances to do so safely and persistent firing on the facility makes people afraid to leave.
Israel launched bomb, artillery, and sniper attacks on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia beginning Saturday, as the Wafa news agency reported. The attacks killed three people in the area and wounded several, according to Wafu. On Sunday, an Israeli drone strike on the hospital’s fuel tanks and power generator shut off its electricity, the AnadoluAgencyreported.
“We currently have nearly 400 civilians inside the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators,” hospital director Dr. Husam Abu Safiya said in a statement on Sunday. “We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment, and time.”
“Every bomb that slams into Kamal Adwan Hospital, every nurse forced to watch a child slip away, every life lost from denied treatment indicts us all.”
Abu Safiya described the onset of what he called an “unprecedented” attack in a message Saturday evening local time:
The Israeli military has targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital with different types of weapons without prior warning. We are being directly attacked, the ICU unit, along with the maternity and nursing departments, are coming under fire.
The bombing is being conducted with tank fire and quadcopters, directly targeting us while we are present inside the hospital departments. We don’t know why we are being targeted at this hour.
Several people were wounded in attacks on the hospital’s laboratory and mechanical department,according to Al Jazeera.
“What we are seeing now is a deliberate attack on the health facility,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Deir el-Balah. “The Israeli military has ordered evacuations from the hospital, but they have also created an intimidating environment that makes people feel it’s unsafe to leave.”
Mahmoud said he lost contact with the hospital Saturday night.
Footage shared on social media and verified by Al Jazeera also showed patients sheltering in hallways to avoid the Israeli attack.
Responding to reports from the hospital on Saturday, World Health Organization (WHO) director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for a cease-fire around the hospital and for the protection of patients and staff.
“Tonight’s reports of bombardment near Kamal Adwan Hospital and order to evacuate the hospital are deeply worrisome,” Ghebreyseus wrote on social media. “The hospital has been in the midst of fighting for too long, and the lives of patients are at risk.”
Also on Saturday, the Palestine Mental Health Networks and Doctors Against Genocide issued a statement in support of Abu Safiya and Kamal Adwan, demanding that the international community act to open a humanitarian corridor in Gaza, protect healthcare facilities and staff, and end the blockade on the besieged enclave.
Arguing that the “relentless assaults on Kamal Adwan Hospital—a sanctuary meant to save lives in northern Gaza—are part of a deliberate genocidal campaign,” they wrote:
Humanity cannot pretend not to see. Neutrality in the face of genocide is complicity. Every bomb that slams into Kamal Adwan Hospital, every nurse forced to watch a child slip away, every life lost from denied treatment indicts us all.
The world is watching. Will it once again stand idly by as another hospital crumbles, another child’s breath is silenced, another fragile hope is extinguished? Or will it finally rise to restore the sanctity of life and the universal right to health?
In a video message shared by Drop Site News early Sunday morning Gaza time, Abu Safiya said that he had been ordered to evacuate patients to the Indonesian Hospital, but that this would be “impossible” since the hospital needs ambulances to transport the wounded and would need to move supplies as well. He said a successful evacuation would take days.
In a second message on Sunday, he linked the IDF’s attacks on Kamal Adwan to similar attacks on hospitals throughout Gaza. In October, a report from the United Nation’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system,” carrying out nearly 500 attacks on healthcare facilities between October 7, 2023 and July 30, 2024.
Abu Safiya said that the IDF did not provide hospitals with the support they needed when it ordered evacuations, such as equipment and safe passage:
We call on the world to witness this pattern once again. We have repeatedly requested assistance and have openly invited the occupation to see for themselves the internal workings of our hospitals so that we may continue to serve our population without fear of attack and death. These calls were rejected.
We also call on the world to witness, that if Kamal Adwan Hospital is decommissioned, there will be no way of preserving conditions of life to the remaining 75,000+ civilians in north Gaza.
We call on the world to witness these crimes of extermination and act now.
Abu Safiya also said the IDF was targeting the hospital’s fuel tanks, which would explode if hit, causing “mass casualties.”
Gaza’s Government Media Office urged the WHO to visit the hospital on Sunday, saying the attack was part of a concerted attempt to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system.
“These attacks are ongoing and have not stopped for nearly 80 days since the ground aggression on the northern Gaza Strip Governorate began, which has claimed the lives of thousands of martyrs, left many missing, wounded, or detained,” the statement said.
In response to the reports from the hospital, the IDF told The Washington Post that it had not targeted Kamal Adwan on Saturday to its knowledge. It also said separately that it was operating in Beit Lahia. Israel has intensified military operations in northern Gaza over the past three months, according to Reuters. The IDF further told Reuters on Friday that it had helped to evacuate more than 100 patients from Kamal Adwan and provided fuel and food to the hospital. It did not respond to a request for comment about Saturday’s attacks.
Also on Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli attacks had killed 32 people and wounded 54 in the last 24 hours. At least eight people, including children, were killed in a strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.
“We came out to see the scale of destruction, with dead bodies, blood, and body parts all over the place. Israeli warplanes fired three missiles on this school. The explosion was huge and frightening to us and to our children,” witness Um Aref Ahel, who has been displaced by the war, told Al Jazeera. “We appeal to the whole world to bring this war to an end.”
The official Gaza Health Ministry death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza, which began October 7, 2023 in response to a deadly Hamas attack on Southern Israel, stands at over 45,000, though many remain unaccounted for beneath the rubble. This month, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports labelling Israel’s assault a genocide.
Palestinians living in makeshift tents and ruined buildings in Jabalia Camp try to continue their daily lives under Israeli attacks in Gaza Strip on December 18, 2024. [Dawoud Abo Alkas – Anadolu Agency]
The Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip has become a “ghost town” with around 70% of homes and buildings completely destroyed in Israel’s deadly onslaught in the area, Israeli media said on Sunday, Anadolu Agency reports.
“As far as the eye can see lie miles and miles of destroyed homes. It’s hard to look away from the devastated remains of Jabalia’s refugee camp in northern Gaza,” Amos Harel, a military affairs analyst, writes in Haaretz newspaper.
The Israeli army estimates that 70% of the refugee camp’s buildings were completely destroyed.
“I could see that even the few buildings that are still standing were badly damaged,” Harel said.
Israel has launched a large-scale ground operation in northern Gaza since Oct. 5 to allegedly prevent the Palestinian group Hamas from regrouping. Palestinians, however, accuse Israel of seeking to occupy the area and forcibly displace its residents.
Since then, no sufficient humanitarian aid including food, medicine, and fuel has been allowed into the area, leaving the remaining population on the verge of imminent famine.
“The IDF (army) operated here twice before, in December 2023 and May 2024. But this time, the camp was taken apart,” Amos said.
“Jabalia has become a ghost town. Outside, you mainly see pack after pack of stray dogs roaming around and hunting for scraps of food.”
The Israeli onslaught in northern Gaza was the latest episode in a brutal Israeli war on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 45,200 people, mostly women and children, since Oct. 7, 2023.
Last month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on Gaza.
