Israel-Hamas war: Biden says Gaza hospital must be protected

Indonesian President Joko Widodo urged US President Joe Biden during a visit to the White House to do more to end what he described as "atrocities" in Gaza and to help bring about a cease-fire.

"Indonesia appeals to the US to do more to stop the atrocities in Gaza," Widodo, the leader of the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, said as the two presidents met. "Cease-fire is a must for the sake of humanity," he said.

The Indonesian president had said on Sunday that he would bring Biden a "very strong message" from a joint summit of Arab and Muslim leaders in Riyadh at the weekend which condemned Israel and called for a cease-fire.

US officials had said Biden would in turn urge his Indonesian counterpart to take a "larger role" in resolving the Israel-Hamas conflict during talks at the White House on Monday.

Widodo is one of many foreign leaders in the US this week to attend an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. Chinese President Xi Jinping and even Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk — one of few senior Russian officials not facing US sanctions amid the invasion of Ukraine — are expected at the summit.

US President Joe Biden has said that al-Shifa Hospital — the largest in the Gaza Strip — "must be protected."

Staff at the hospital have said they are under siege, that the facility has been bombed numerous times and that Israeli snipers have been shooting people who leave the building.

Israel has denied these claims, but also said that Hamas is using a network of tunnels underneath the hospital. It has not provided any evidence for this claim.

Al-Shifa has run out of fuel. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Sunday that it "is not functioning as a hospital anymore."

"It is my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action," Biden said, responding to the reports.

Relatives of people who were taken hostage by Hamas during its October 7 attacks on Israel gathered in Jerusalem on Monday to urge the United Nations to secure their release.

The protesters held up pictures of their loved ones who are currently being held in Gaza.

A joint letter was handed over to Pascal Soto, the top UN official in Jerusalem, addressed to Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

"We urge you to exercise your moral and executive authority as secretary general of the United Nations," Gil Dickman said, reading out the letter.

"I just came to ask for the UN to help us," said Yoav Engel, father of Ofir Engel, held hostage by Hamas.

"My kid is there 38 days and other 238 people, babies, kids, teenagers, adults, sick men. And no one know what's going on with them," Engel said, according to the Associated Press.

Guterres is "doing his outmost" to secure the release of the hostages, Soto told the protesters.

DW spoke with Tamara Alrifai, Director of External Relations and Communications at the UN aid agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Alrifai said that her 13,000 UN colleagues in Gaza — many from Gaza themselves — are facing "extremely difficult working conditions."

The UNRWA official said her colleagues "have seen tens of thousands of people coming from the north to the South, adding to the immense overcrowding that is now in the South of the Gaza Strip, especially in our shelters."

Alrifai said that "70% of the Gaza population is now displaced."

Many of these have taken shelter in cramped UN-run schools, but there is not enough aid to support them with too few trucks entering Gaza still.

"We're running out of food, we're running out of clean water and mostly we're running out of fuel," she told DW. "And if we completely run out of fuel, we can't even move our trucks to distribute the humanitarian assistance."

She said the situation will be "disastrous" if there is no cease-fire.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday that fuel shortages mean that it will have to suspend its aid operations in Gaza within two days.

"The humanitarian operation in Gaza will grind to a halt in the next 48 hours as no fuel is allowed to enter Gaza," UNRWA's Gaza chief Thomas White wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

He said that UNRWA had been using fuel from a reservoir, but this had now run out and that no fuel had entered the enclave since October 7 when Hamas launched terrorist attacks against Israel.

Israel responded to the attacks by cutting off supplies of water, electricity, food and fuel to the 2.4 million people living in Gaza before launching a massive bombing campaign and ground offensive.

White also said that water distribution facilities had also run out of fuel meaning that 200,000 people would lose access to drinkable water.

"A tough decision — fuel for a hospital or fuel to produce drinking water — both save lives," the UN official said. "Unfortunately, this is not a hypothetical…"

The Hamas-run Health Ministry also said earlier on Monday that all hospitals in northern Gaza were no longer operational due to fuel shortages.

German authorities have banned at least 99 pro-Palestinian events since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

The bans on demonstrations and other events were justified by fears that antisemitic offenses could occur.

The ministry said that a total of 1,068 events related to the war had actually taken place, including 553 pro-Israeli and 515 pro-Palestinian events.

The ministry warned that the numbers were provisional due to possible delays in transmitting data from the Federal Criminal Police Office.

Some 3,150 criminal offenses were also recorded in connection with the war and related events. Most of these were offenses of resistance, incitement to hatred and damage of property.

Germany was recently condemned by a number of Muslim-majority countries during a UN review of its human rights record. They accused it of restricting freedom of speech by refusing to allow many pro-Palestinian protests to go ahead.

Israel's military said that its air force and ground forces have conducted 4,300 strikes since the beginning of the ground offensive in Gaza.

In a statement posted on the Telegram messaging service, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that hundreds of anti-tank missile launch posts and around 300 tunnel shafts were among the targets.

The IDF said "3,000 terrorist infrastructure sites" had been hit, while hundreds of Hamas command and control centers had also been targeted.

Video footage showing airstrikes and other IDF activity was posted along with the military statement.

The IDF began bombarding targets in Gaza following the October 7 terror attack on southern Israel, launched by the Hamas militant group, during which around 1,200 people were killed.

Hundreds of others were taken hostage during the large-scale attack. They are still being held at locations in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry says that more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.

More than 290 German citizens have left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing to Egypt since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Foreign Ministry.

A ministry spokesperson in Berlin said that around 400 German citizens were still in the Palestinian Territories, including the occupied West Bank.

Regarding the situation at the Rafah crossing, the spokesperson was reported as saying: "We are continuing to work intensively to ensure that the border crossing remains open so that all German nationals and their family members who wish to do so are able to leave."

More than 800 people were allowed to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing on Sunday.

Nearly all were foreigners while a few were patients from Gaza's hospitals and their caretakers.

United Nations (UN) missions around the world were flying flags at half-mast while staff observed a minute's silence to honor the 101 employees killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began.

"Today, in solidarity with the UN family, we lower our flag to half-mast to observe a minute of silence — paying tribute to our UN colleagues who lost their lives on duty in Gaza," the UN Human Rights office posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

"This is the highest number of aid workers killed in the history of our organisation in such a short time," said Tatiana Valovaya, Director General of the UN Office in Geneva.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a humanitarian cease-fire along with the unconditional release of all hostages taken by Hamas militants following the October 7 terror attacks on Israel.

Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has spoken about the need for "humanitarian pauses" in Gaza rather than a cease-fire.

"I understand the impulse to call for a cease-fire" in Gaza, DW's Alexandra von Nahmen quoted Baerbock as saying in Brussels as the foreign minister arrived for talks with EU counterparts.

Baerbock, however, questioned how Israel's security would be guaranteed during a halt in fighting and explained that it was for this reason that Germany supported humanitarian pauses rather than a cease-fire.

On Saturday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for pauses in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to reach those in need.

Germany has repeatedly reiterated its support for Israel following the large-scale terror attack by the Hamas militant group in southern Israel on October 7.

Norwegian Refugee Council spokesperson (NRC) Shaina Low told DW the situation at Gaza's health facilities is deteriorating as time passes and that medical staff were trying to function under extreme difficulty.

"Day by day the situation in Gaza's hospitals are getting worse, many of the hospitals have shut down services completely or are operating with very little resources," Low said, with medicine, fuel, food and clean water in short supply.

"Doctors and medical personnel are working under the most difficult of circumstances, trying to save lives and struggling to do so," Low pointed out.

The NRC spokesperson said the international community and Israel had the responsibility to provide assistance, including medical supplies, "in order to prevent unnecessary death and injury."

Low said that her organization was still managing to remain in communication with staff on the ground in Gaza, although daily "headcounts" were becoming more difficult amid telecommunication disruptions since the war began.

DW's Rebecca Ritters in Jerusalem said that fighting outside the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza has made it almost impossible for people to leave the Palestinian territory's largest health facility.

Ritters said that there have been accounts of people "trying to leave the hospital and being shot at."

"People just too scared, medical staff saying that people are too sick, too injured to be able to be moved, so the situation just increasingly difficult," Ritters said.

Ritters also reported that there had yet to be any progress on Israel's offer to evacuate babies.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the situation is "dire" as the hospital runs short of essential supplies, while there are patients who cannot be moved.

Israel says that Hamas militants have deliberately based an operational headquarters at the facility and in an underground tunnel complex.

On the topic of movement through the southern border post of Rafah between Gaza and Egypt, Ritters said there had been confirmation from the border authority that more than 800 people had been able to leave Gaza on Sunday.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Monday said that it was continuing to conduct raids on the outskirts of the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.

The IDF said forces were "targeting terrorist infrastructure located in central governmental institutions in the heart of the civilian population, including schools, universities, mosques and residences of terrorists," in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging service.

The IDF went on to say that infrastructure of the Hamas militant group "was deliberately located inside civilian structures" and that near the al-Shati camp, Israeli troops had uncovered a section of a mosque which contained a large number of explosive devices.

Israel's military said that troops also entered the residence of a senior Islamic Jihad member and found "a large number of weapons inside the kids' room of the residence."

Islamic Jihad is a smaller militant group operating in Gaza, allied with Hamas. The US, the EU and other governments have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The IDF posted a video and photos of the items found during the raid.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) urged "the protection of civilians in Gaza trapped in fighting."

"People call us day and night, saying they are afraid to open their door for fear of getting killed," said William Schomburg, head of the ICRC mission in the territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at the possibility of an agreement for the release of hostages in Gaza.

"There could be [an agreement], but I think the less I say about it, the more I increase the chances it materializes," Netanyahu told US broadcaster NBC.

He argued that Israel's ground offensive in the Gaza Strip created movement in negotiations.

"If a deal is available, well, we'll talk about it when it's there. We'll announce it if it's achieved," he said.

Netanyahu did not provide any details on the potential deal.

Hamas took 239 people hostage during its attacks on southern Israel on October 7, according to Israeli authorities.

US President Joe Biden and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani agree that all hostages should be released, according to the White House.

The two leaders spoke on Sunday about "urgent ongoing efforts" to secure the release of hostages being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Biden "unequivocally" condemned the holding of hostages by Hamas, according to the White House statement.

"The two leaders agreed that all hostages must be released without further delay," the statement said.

Qatar has been leading mediation efforts between Hamas and Israeli officials over the hostages.

Israeli authorities say Hamas killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and took over 200 hostages in its attacks on October 7. The group is classified as a terrorist organization by Germany, the United States, the European Union and several other countries.

US President Joe Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said that negotiations were taking place.

"There are efforts to secure a deal that would involve the release of hostages," Sullivan told the ABC broadcaster.

"I have to be careful about what I say publicly about this because it is of course a delicate and sensitive negotiation," he said.