Some 436 people, including 182 children, were killed in overnight Israeli strikes on Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.
The majority of those killed were from the southern part of Gaza, the ministry added.
The total death toll since the war began has risen to 5,087 killed, including 2,055 children and 1,119 women, the ministry said.
Wafaa Surafa, Samy Magdy and Samya Kullab (AP) report:
A premature baby squirms inside a glass incubator in the neonatal ward of al-Aqsa Hospital in the central Gaza Strip. He cries out as intravenous lines are connected to his tiny body. A ventilator helps him breathe as a catheter delivers medication and monitors flash his fragile vital signs.
His life hinges on the constant flow of electricity, which is in danger of running out imminently unless the hospital can get more fuel for its generators. Once the generators stop, hospital director Iyad Abu Zahar fears that the babies in the ward, unable to breathe on their own, will perish.
“The responsibility on us is huge,” he said.
The bodies are stacked in a courtyard outside, prayers are said, and relatives collapse to the floor wailing in grief.
Inside the hospital, doctors battle to patch up the walking wounded and save the gravely injured - but stores of medicine and supplies are dwindling by the day.
A BBC Arabic reporter witnessed a facility overwhelmed with casualties where doctors were racing to finish procedures before moving on to the next patient.
Some of the images which have emerged from the hospital on Sunday are too graphic to share. Children - including at least two babies - are among the dead.
Soon after the building was hit, churchgoers and other Palestinians rushed to the heap of concrete slabs and debris in an attempt to rescue those trapped in the rubble.
"It was very painful to hear 'my mother is inside,' 'my son is inside,' 'my sister is inside,' " said Elias al-Jeldah, a Palestinian Christian who arrived on the scene shortly after the airstrike. "People were frantic. People were so scared."
Among the dead were several relatives of former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, whose father is Palestinian. "The Palestinian Christian community has endured so much. Our family is hurting badly," he wrote on the social media site X.
In spite of Thursday's strike, hundreds of people have continued to shelter at the St. Porphyrius Church in the days since.
Palestinian Christians who chose to remain at the Orthodox church and the nearby Catholic church said they felt they had nowhere else to go, even as Israel has urged people to evacuate from Gaza City to the southern half of the territory.
The church "seems to be the only place that can take us," said Ayyad. "We Christians have no one in the south."
Churches across the region memorialize the victims
Among the churches holding services to memorialize those killed in Gaza was one of the most sacred sites in Christianity: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site in Jerusalem's Old City that is said to be where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.
There, on Sunday, steps away from the elaborate marble shrine that surrounds what many believe to be Jesus' tomb, the patriarch of Jerusalem and All Palestine — the branch of Orthodoxy to which the St. Porphyrius Church belongs — held a prayer service for the victims.
When not bombing churches, the Israeli government bombs mosques. Saturday, Israel says it struck a mosque in Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, with Palestinian medics reporting at least one person killed." Friday, Karen Zraick and
An Israeli airstrike hit the grounds of the historic Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, on Thursday night, according to church officials and witnesses.
The church compound, comprising a chapel, seven buildings and a courtyard, was full of Christian families from the Gaza Strip, witnesses said. They said the airstrike happened around 7:30 p.m., when dinner was being distributed.
Videos and images from the scene showed rescuers digging through rubble, working with flashlights late Thursday and into Friday. The chapel was not struck.
Chao Deng (WALL STREET JOURNAL) also noted Friday, "The Israeli military said that a blast Thursday night on the St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church campus in Gaza City was the result of its airstrike." Saturday, Najib Jobain, Joseph Krauss and Samy Magdy (AP) reported, "The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened Saturday to let a trickle of desperately needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off and began pounding it with airstrikes following Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago. Just 20 trucks were allowed in, an amount aid workers said was insufficient to address the unprecedented humanitarian crisis. More than 200 trucks carrying 3,000 tons of aid have been waiting nearby for days." Jon Queally (COMMON DREAMS) explains:
Guillemette Thomas, MSF's medical coordinator for Gaza, said Saturday that inside Gaza "we have an extremely high number of injured people arriving in hospitals, very serious patients requiring complex care. According to our colleagues who still work at Shifa hospital, the hospital will soon run out of fuel and therefore electricity. This means that all the patients currently in intensive care units connected to ventilators and babies in incubators will die because of the lack of electricity. Operating theaters will no longer be able to function, patients will no longer be able to be operated on and the number of victims will increase significantly in the coming hours."
Thomas warned that those in the intensive care were "just the tip of the iceberg," warning that all injured and sick people Gaza remain at severe risk.
Human Rights Watch was among those who suggested that the refusal to allow fuel into Gaza—and the absence of efforts to restore or repair devastated the electricity grid or water systems—makes the paltry level stand out as intentionally inadequate.
"While aid agencies struggle to squeeze a few trucks of humanitarian aid into southern Gaza via Egypt, the Israeli authorities are keeping their crossings with Gaza closed and refusing to flick the switch for the water and electricity supply," said Tirana Hassan, HRW's executive director. "There is no excuse for denying water, food, and medicine to Gaza's civilian population. It is cruel and contrary to international law."
Doctors Without Borders adds, "We are in touch with some of our colleagues who are supporting teams from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, particularly in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where MSF had provided care for burn victims for years. Today, medical staff suffer the same fate as the rest of Gazans: they have been constantly bombed for the past 10 days. Our colleagues tell us that many doctors and other health workers have died since the start of the Israeli offensive."
CBS NEWS notes, "Israel plans to step up its attacks on the Gaza Strip starting Saturday as preparation for the next stage of its war on Hamas, Israel's military spokesman said. Asked about a possible ground invasion into Gaza, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters Saturday night that the military was trying to create optimal conditions beforehand." And the Israeli government is counting on more weapons from the US government based on the personal promises of President Joe Biden. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) reports:
With more than 4,100 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis already dead as Israel bombards the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a surprise attack led by Hamas, progressive groups on Friday pushed back against U.S. President Joe Biden's effort to further arm Israel.
"In the face of massive suffering in Gaza and disregard for international law by the Israeli government, the U.S. must not provide additional military aid or weapons that would cause more deaths," the National Priorities Project (NPP) at the Institute for Policy Studies said, demanding that U.S. use its diplomatic power to push for a cease-fire.
"The Israeli military's onslaught on Gaza has not protected civilians. It has instead targeted them," NPP asserted, pointing out that while cutting off Palestinians in the Hamas-governed territory from essentials like food, water, medicine, and electricity, Israel has bombed residential, religious, medical, and educational buildings over the past two weeks.
Andre Damon (WSWS) notes the United Nation placed the Gaza death toll at 4, 137 on Friday and that, "Over the past week, US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have all visited Israel to give their unequivocal endorsement of the genocidal policies of the Netanyahu regime, which is widely despised within Israel and by Jewish people around the world." They're not only increasing the killings, the Israeli government is also arresting activists. Sophie Squire (UK SOCIALIST WORKER) reports:
As the Israeli state prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza, soldiers and settlers have stepped up their brutality against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Mayar Derbashi, a charity worker in Hebron , told Socialist Worker, “A dire and savage onslaught is unfolding in Gaza.
“In the West Bank, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in arrests. Before 7 October there were about 5,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention. In less than two weeks, that number has doubled, exceeding 10,000.
Yet Joe Biden wants to give more weapons and more US tax dollars. His visit accomplished nothing and Ralph Nader really nails that down at DISSIDENT VOICE:
If President Joe Biden were a pony, instead of a perennial warhorse (e.g., gung-ho for Bush/Cheney’s criminal destruction of Iraq), he would have his tail between his legs on his return from a one-day trip to Israel. He failed to achieve any immediate, critical objectives while the ongoing destruction of Gaza and the defenseless Palestinians continues.
Did Biden get Israel and Egypt to allow the exit of hundreds of American citizens fleeing the Gazan firestorm? No!
Did Biden open up corridors for humanitarian aid to the babies, children, women, elderly and other civilians in Gaza who had nothing to do with the October 7 Hamas homicide/suicide attack on Israelis? No!
To the contrary, earlier in the week he cruelly ordered his UN Ambassador to veto a widely supported resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.
Did he forcefully double down on his earlier counsel to the Israeli government to obey the laws of war, then and now, being openly violated? No! He continued his silence after the Israeli Defense Minister ordered his soldiers with the genocidal command, “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water…” That death sentence includes patients in hospitals who must endure the carpet bombing of this long-time blockaded tiny strip of desert land holding 2.3 million people. (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).
Joyce Chediac (LIBERATION!) notes what Joe's visit to Tel Aviv means on the world stage, "This extraordinary visit of a U.S. president to a war zone is a full endorsement of Israel’s decision to cut off food, electricity and water to Gaza; of its bombings of several medical facilities and ambulances, schools, mosques, bakeries and UN food storage facilities; and its repeated bombing of the Rafa border crossing with Egypt, making it impossible for Gaza to retrieve 1,000 tons of supplies waiting there to be picked up. It is a green light for whatever else Israel chooses to do." WORKERS WORLD points out, "Gaza’s territory is roughly the same size and holds the same population as Chicago. One can hardly imagine what sort of horror the current bombing means for the people who are themselves mostly refugees or their descendants, where there is no functioning economy, where half the population are children, and where the Israeli blockade makes it near impossible to leave. There are good reasons that not only Palestinians but also some Western political leaders have called Gaza the largest open-air prison in the world." Eric London (WSWS) cites Joe Biden's plan to give $14 billion to Israel and points out that since 1948, the US taxpayers have already forked over $260 billion to the Israeli government. Of Joe's Thursday night TV address, Eric offers, "Over 20 years ago, then-president George W. Bush used the same language to justify launching imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which were to last 20 years, kill more than one million people, and cost more than $8 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. A 2022 report published by the Pentagon admitted that each taxpayer paid $8,278 for the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, though the true figure is likely an order of magnitude higher."
Funding this assault and providing more weapons for it and verbally praising it means the US government is also responsible -- legally responsible -- for the genocide being carried out. Graham Peebles (DISSIDENT VOICE) observes, "Peace is impossible whilst these destructive ideals dominate." At TRUTHOUT, Marjorie Cohn (former president of The National Lawyers Guild) writes:
In retaliation against the Palestinians in Gaza for Hamas’s October 7 killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians, Israel has intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza to a “complete siege.” Israel is slaughtering Gazans, cutting off their food, water, electricity and fuel, ordering more than 1 million of them to leave their homes and then bombing their evacuation routes, and trapping them with nowhere to escape.
Israeli forces are amassing tanks on the border in preparation for an imminent invasion. The United States is sending massive firepower to help Israel.
“Complete siege” is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. It “explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza,” Raz Segal wrote in Jewish Currents.
Israel has turned its incremental genocide of the Palestinian people into full-fledged genocide — with the unconditional support of the U.S. government.
“There is a plausible and credible case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza, as a significant part of the overall Palestinian population, as a protected group,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) wrote in its October 18 emergency legal briefing paper titled “Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide.”
Dana Elborno (TRUTHOUT) writes, "Amid the death and destruction from the shower of bombs dropping on Gaza like rain, truly the thing that has forever changed me is seeing how the world is turning into a hate mob against a civilian population, a majority of whom are refugees, the majority of whom are children, all of whom have been living besieged for 16 years. It is the media coverage priming the public to accept mass atrocities by using hateful and racist rhetoric that has left me feeling the most hopeless and scared. This incendiary and dehumanizing language used to describe Palestinians is going to contribute to genocide in Gaza and increasing violence against Muslims in the U.S., like the stabbing to death of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian 6-year-old in Illinois." Gregory Shupak (COMMON DREAMS) also addresses the media coverage:
Recent editorials in leading liberal U.S. newspapers have consistently presented the unrelenting mass terror that Israel inflicts on Palestinians as legitimate.
Media outlets have endorsed Israel's assault on Gaza, and America's funding of the attack, while criticizing those who offer even mildly dissenting views. American publications have repeatedly conferred on Israel's violence a virtuousness, even as it mows people down - a generosity not afforded to its Palestinian counterpart.
On 12 October, The Washington Post ran an editorial praising US President Joe Biden for his "unreserved condemnation of Hamas's terrorism," saying: "In that respect, Mr. Biden's firm words also stand in welcome contrast to the equivocations by a small number of the left-wing members of Congress in his own party, which White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre specifically repudiated."
The link to Jean-Pierre's words indicates that the "equivocations" the Post objects to are statements that "suggested the Hamas attack on Israel should be considered in context with previous actions by Israel," as well as those that "opposed US military aid for Israel on social media and called for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict."
A day before that editorial was published, the human rights groups Mezan, al-Haq, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights jointly documented that, just in the period between midday 10 and 11 October, Israel destroyed entire neighborhoods of al-Qarm, Ezbet Abdrabbo, and al-Sikka, with rescue teams "recover[ing] dozens of bodies" while "others are still under the rubble"; "target[ed]" Gaza's Islamic University and bombed the Al-Fakhoura Scholarship Program building," assaults that combined to kill 57 Palestinians, including 20 children. They further noted Israel's air strikes and shelling of the Middle Area District's agricultural lands and "residential areas, most notably in the three densely populated refugee camps of Al-Bureij, Al-Nusairat, and Deir al-Balah", killing at least 49 Palestinians, 15 of them children.
Media analysis also comes from Mohammed El-Kurd at THE NATION:
I and a few other Palestinians have been hopping between TV channels and radio stations to talk about the atrocities unfolding in Gaza, most of which are absent from headlines, and we have encountered similar hostility. Producers invite us, it seems, not to interview us for our experiences or analysis or the context we can provide, but to interrogate us. They test our answers against the viewer’s inherent bias—a bias well-fed through years of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian rhetoric. The bombs raining down on the besieged Gaza Strip become secondary, if not entirely irrelevant, to our televised trials.
While I don’t expect pleasantries on air, I want accurate reporting. On the UK’s LBC radio, last week, host Rachel Johnson (sister of the former prime minister) took a break from repeatedly interrupting to question me—in fact, indict me—about unverified, word-of-mouth reports of Palestinian fighters “decapitating and raping” Israelis. She didn’t mention the various videos of Israelis mutilating, stomping, and urinating on Palestinian corpses, many of which are readily available to 83,000 subscribers of an Israeli Telegram channel named “Terrorists_are_dying.”
Such unsubstantiated claims were—and still are—all over the news. The Independent (UK) plastered its Chief International Correspondent Bel Trew’s “impossible to verify” reports of “decapitated women and babies” on its front page. Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg reported then redacted “rapes.” On CNN, a teary-eyed Sara Sidner confirmed live, based on Israeli official sources, that “babies and toddlers were found with their heads decapitated,” then apologized on Twitter (now X) that she was “misled,” following a statement, again, from Israeli official sources admitting there is no information confirming the claim that “Hamas beheaded babies.”
This is a familiar playbook. A claim is circulated without evidence; Western journalists spread it like wildfire; diplomats and politicians parrot it; a narrative is built; the general public believes it, and the damage is done.
It may seem trivial to place such weight on the manner of killing, given the fact of killing, but such language isn’t without consequences. On Monday, an Illinois landlord attacked his Palestinian American tenants, seriously injuring a woman and killing her 6-year-old child. “You Muslims must die,” he yelled as he stabbed them each over a dozen times. Joe Biden said he was “shocked and sickened” by the attack, as if he could divorce himself from a claim he had made days before that he’d seen “pictures of terrorists beheading children” (a claim he quietly retracted hours later).
Conjuring rape and decapitation feeds on Islamophobic tropes. Simultaneously, it works hand in hand with the Israeli regime’s PR strategy, which has sought to equate Hamas with ISIS in the audience’s imagination, resurrecting the culture that brought forth the “War on Terror.”
Robin Andersen (DISSIDENT VOICE) also contemplates the effect of the slanted media coverage:
On October 7, the AP reported that US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.” On October 9, The Times of Israel quoted Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian directed his threat at all Gazans on October 10, declaring, “Kidnapping, abusing and murdering children, women and elderly people is not human.” He then announced, “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”
In a piece published on October 8 titled “Media Calls The Attack On Israel Unprovoked: Experts Say That’s Historically Inaccurate,” the Huffington Post pointed to the Israeli government’s “apartheid against Palestinians” as a provocation. It quoted IfNotNow, an American Jewish group that opposes Israeli apartheid, expressing their dread for the loss of life and loved ones, Israelis and Palestinians alike. It continued, “Every day under Israel’s system of apartheid is a provocation. The strangling siege on Gaza is a provocation. Settlers terrorizing entire Palestinian villages, soldiers raiding and demolishing Palestinian homes, murdering Palestinians in the streets, Israeli ministers calling for genocide and expulsion” are all provocations.
Indeed, multiple international human rights groups have defined the long-term Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as a system of apartheid. The death toll on each side exposes the false assertion that Israeli violence is always retaliatory and that of Palestinians is “unprecedented.” The UNOCHA documents 6,407 Palestinian deaths since 2008, compared to 308 Israeli fatalities. Gregory Shupak reported that since 2001, more than ten thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, with “nearly 9 out of 10 deaths this century have been on the Palestinian side.” In addition, the Israelis have made daily life in Gaza miserable. As UK journalist Jonathan Cook wrote, “[Gaza’s] inhabitants—one million of them children—are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to proper health care, drinkable water, and the use of electricity because Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.” But voices such as Shupak and Cook are virtually absent from US establishment news coverage of the violence.
The Hamas attacks were taken out of the context of ongoing violence, presented without cause, and in narratives that see only Hamas violence but have rarely featured or condemned equivalent Israeli violence against Palestinians. Establishment media’s one-sided pro-Israel coverage, established over many years, fed into the growing consensus that a major retaliation by Israelis would be forthcoming. Early corporate news reporting seemed to confirm its inevitability, with almost no voices of reason or caution allowed to enter the militarized revenge frame coalescing around a major attack.
The verbiage used by the New York Times on the Tribe of Nova music festival also illustrates Big Journalism’s sensationalized, inaccurate reporting. The Times wrote that the “massacre of its youth” and Israel’s “75-year-old quest for some carefree normalcy” met the “murderous fury of those long-oppressed Palestinians who deny the state’s right to exist.” The language of the Times’ report—using “murderous” and denial of Israel’s “right to exist,” with “long-oppressed Palestinians”—makes a mockery of what Gazans have experienced. Additionally, it is not true that Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exist. A quick look at the US State Department’s summation of the 1993 Oslo Accords states that the Palestinian Authority “renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace” and Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians,” concessions that undergirded the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. But Rashid Khalidi has called out the “empty words about a two-state solution while providing money, weapons and diplomatic support for systematic, calculated Israeli actions that have made that solution inconceivable.”
Dylan Saba (IN THESE TIMES) analyzes the media coverage:
On October 8, the morning after Hamas launched an attack from the Gaza strip that killed 1,400 Israelis, Ha’aretz—Israel’s paper of record — published an editorial laying blame for the massacre squarely on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government. “The disaster that befell Israel,” the editorial board wrote, “is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” Netanyahu “completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession” and “embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.” It was a damning and powerful indictment.
Two days later, Ryna Workman, the student body president of NYU Law School, sent out a newsletter to classmates as Israel’s retaliatory assault on the Gaza Strip was well underway. Expanding on the Ha’aretz editorial board’s language, Workman wrote that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” Workman also affirmed their solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression.
Almost immediately, they faced a torrent of backlash in the form of online disparagement and right-wing media attention. In response to pressure, the dean of the law school publicly condemned Workman’s remarks. By the evening, the law firm Winston & Strawn, where Workman had planned to work after graduating, publicly withdrew their job offer without so much as a phone call. The university then unilaterally removed Workman from their position as student body president without any disciplinary process, and threatened further charges — all for daring to speak out.
Workman is not alone. Across the US, people speaking out on behalf of Palestinian human rights and against Israeli war crimes, apartheid policies, and settler-colonial expansion that have been unfolding over nearly eight decades are facing a wave of McCarthyite backlash directly targeting their future careers and livelihoods. Students at other prominent universities have faced the same: the leaders of Harvard University student groups were doxxed and smeared for signing a statement also expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Their names and faces were plastered on a mobile billboard truck that roamed around campus for days, and a “College Terror List” circulated online accusing them of antisemitism. Several also lost job offers. A Berkeley law professor published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring legal employers not to hire his own students and smearing them as antisemitic.
Chip Gibbons (Defending Rights and Dissent) noted earlier this week:
Right now, Arab-American civil rights organizations are reporting an uptick in harassment, including FBI visits to mosques and FBI and ICE detention of Palestinian nationals.
Politicians are pressuring activists to cancel First-Amendment protected assemblies and boasting to the press that police will be monitoring them.
The media for its part, instead of serving as a critical watchdog on government abuses of power, including repression of dissent, has helped to whip up this atmosphere. They are conflating protesters with terrorists, pushing politicians to condemn them. They have devoted attention to critiquing the social media posts of college students.
When journalists have asked critical questions, they have been rebuked by officials. During a State Department news conference after several independent journalists asked questions about the impacts of Israel’s bombardment on civilians, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller chastised the journalists stating “Some of the questions I am getting today do seem to ignore the fact that Israel just had 100s of its citizens killed, taken hostage[…]some of the questions seem to pretend that Israel should not be able to conduct operations to be able defend itself and hold accountable terrorists that killed civilians.”
Defending Rights & Dissent will not be silent as some seek to degrade our democracy and pull the country backwards by imitating the worst abuses of the McCarthy and post-9/11 eras.
The media has to lie to sell the war, the US government has to crack down on free speech to keep people ignorant. It's the only way to keep the killing going.
Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani is the Prime Minister of Iraq. At ARSHARQ AL-AWSAT, he writes:
"We reaffirm our unwavering stance regarding the Palestinian right to establish an independent state with Al-Quds as its capital."
This is Iraq's steadfast position, reiterated at the United Nations General Assembly in September this year. It remains the cornerstone of our support for the Palestinian cause, aimed at ensuring the Palestinian people's legitimate rights, peace, independence, security, and sovereignty in their own state.
Today, we stand by this principle following the tragedy at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital and the relentless bombardment of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip. This indiscriminate aggression by Zionist forces has resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.
Recognizing Iraq's historical regional role, Baghdad immediately initiated intense diplomatic efforts upon the outbreak of the conflict in the occupied Palestinian territories. I engaged in a series of telephone conversations with Arab leaders, emphasizing the crucial need for unified Arab and Islamic support for the Palestinian cause. I stressed the importance of de-escalation, upholding human rights, and exerting pressure on the Zionist entity to cease its aggression in the occupied territories and start negotiations that halt the conflict and work towards equitable solutions for the Palestinian people.
During my discussion with US President Joseph Biden, I emphasized the imperative of preventing further escalation in Gaza, halting the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, addressing the deepening humanitarian crisis, facilitating the opening of humanitarian corridors, and ensuring the delivery of essential aid to the people of Gaza, who are enduring the hardships of war and an unjust blockade.
The remarks occur at a time when the US government is evacuating personnel from Iraq. DW reports:
The US State Department on Sunday ordered the departure of all non-emergency embassy personnel and their families from its Baghdad and Erbil embassies in Iraq, "due to increased security threats against US personnel and interests."
The State Department also issued a travel advisory to US citizens, warning them not to go to the Middle Eastern country. "Do not travel to Iraq due to terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, civil unrest, and Mission Iraq's limited capacity to provide support to US citizens," read the advisory.
Vivian Salama (WALL ST. JOURNAL) adds, "The State Department said it ordered eligible family members and nonemergency U.S. government personnel on Friday to depart the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. consulate in Erbil 'due to increased security threats against U.S. personnel and interests'." Here's the advisory in full:
Updated to reflect the ordered departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel and eligible family members.
Do not travel to Iraq due to terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, civil unrest, and Mission Iraq’s limited capacity to provide support to U.S. citizens.
On October 20, 2023, the Department ordered the departure of eligible family members and non-emergency U.S. government personnel from U.S. Embassy Baghdad and U.S. Consulate General Erbil due to increased security threats against U.S. government personnel and interests.
Country Summary: U.S. citizens in Iraq face high risks to their safety and security, including the potential for violence and kidnapping. Terrorist and insurgent groups regularly attack Iraqi security forces and civilians. Anti-U.S. militias threaten U.S. citizens and international companies throughout Iraq. Attacks using improvised explosive devices, indirect fire, and unmanned aerial vehicles occur in many areas of the country, including Baghdad and other major cities. In an emergency, consular services to U.S. citizens in Iraq are limited due to severe restrictions on the movements of U.S. government personnel.
Demonstrations, protests, and strikes occur frequently throughout the country. These events can develop quickly without prior notice, often interrupting traffic, transportation, and other services, and sometimes turning violent.
Do not travel near Iraq’s northern borders due to the continued threat of attacks by terrorist groups, armed conflict, aerial bombardment, and civil unrest. U.S. citizens should especially avoid areas near armed groups in northern Iraq, which have been targeted with aerial strikes by neighboring countries’ militaries.
U.S. citizens should not travel through Iraq to engage in armed conflict in Syria, where they would face extreme personal risks (kidnapping, injury, or death) and legal risks (arrest, fines, and expulsion). The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has stated that it will impose prison sentences of up to ten years on individuals who illegally cross the Iraq-Syria border. Additionally, fighting on behalf of or supporting designated terrorist organizations is a crime under U.S. law that can result in prison sentences and large fines in the United States.
Because of security concerns, U.S. government personnel in Baghdad are instructed not to use Baghdad International Airport. Due to risks to civil aviation operating in the Baghdad Flight Information Region, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has extended for an additional two years its Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) prohibiting certain flights at altitudes below 32,000 feet. For more information, U.S. citizens should consult the Federal Aviation Administration’s Prohibitions, Restrictions, and Notices.
Read the country information page for additional information on travel to Iraq.
If you decide to travel to Iraq:
- Establish your own personal security plan in coordination with your employer or host organization or consider consulting with a professional security organization.
- Draft a will and designate appropriate insurance beneficiaries and/or power of attorney.
- Discuss a plan with loved ones regarding care/custody of children, pets, property, belongings, non-liquid assets (collections, artwork, etc.), funeral wishes, etc.
- Share important documents, login information, and points of contact with loved ones so that they can manage your affairs if you are unable to return as planned to the United States.
- Visit our website for Travel to High-Risk Areas.
- Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
- Follow the Department of State on Facebook and Twitter.
- Review the Country Security Report for Iraq.
- Visit the CDC website for the latest Travel Health Information related to your travel.
Prepare a contingency plan for emergency situations. Review the Traveler’s Checklist
