Global Courant
INTERPRETER
Gaza is suffering its seventh communications outage since October 7, amid brutal Israeli attacks in the Palestinian enclave.
This is how things stand on Tuesday, January 16, 2024:
Latest updates and human impact
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has claimed responsibility for five ballistic missiles that hit the city of Erbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The Kurdish government’s security council said the attack took place late Monday evening, killing at least four people and wounding another six. Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people in Gaza on Monday evening, including 11 Palestinians from two families in Miraj, northern Rafah, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. At least 24,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, and 60,834 others have been injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas appeared to show the bodies of two Israeli hostages in a video released Monday, claiming they had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. In the seventh communications outage since October 7, telecommunications services in Gaza remained closed for a third day in a row on Monday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) said.
Diplomacy
In a message to X on Tuesday, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for claims of sexual violence against Hamas to be “rigorously investigated and prosecuted.” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian described the military strikes by the United States and Britain on Houthi targets as a “strategic mistake” in a phone call on Monday with Guterres, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA ). On Tuesday, Prime Minister Masrour Barzani of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region called on the Iraqi federal government to take a “principled stand” after Iran’s “cowardly attack” on the city of Erbil. He also said the strike was a “blatant violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.” Israel’s cabinet on Monday adopted an amended state budget for 2024, adding $15 billion for war, the Finance Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office said.
Raids and violence in the West Bank
The Israeli army says it has transferred an elite unit from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, where it says the situation is “spiraling,” Al Jazeera correspondent Hamdah Salhut reported on Tuesday. Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles after midnight on Monday in the town of Sinjil, north of Ramallah, Wafa reported. On Monday, Israeli soldiers raided the home of Ahmed and Mohammed Zeidat, whom they accuse of carrying out a car ramming and stabbing attack in Raanana, near Tel Aviv, that killed one person and injured at least 14 others, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Ayman. Nobani.
