Humanitarian organizations and international media and have lost contact with their colleagues amid the intensified Israeli bombardment.
Internet and cell phone services stopped working in the Gaza Strip on Friday night, after Israel “expanded” its military operation against Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave.
The largest telecommunications provider in Gaza, Paltel, has announced “a complete severance of all communications and Internet services” due to intensified Israeli strikes.
“The intense bombing in the last hour caused the destruction of all remaining international routes linking Gaza to the outside world,” the company said.
Netblocks, a company that tracks internet connectivity globally, confirmed the information blackout, calling it “the largest single disruption to internet connectivity in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict and will be perceived by many as a total or near-total internet blackout.”
Multiple international media, including RT, have partially lost contact with their crews and stringers on the ground. The IDF has told news organizations that Israel “cannot guarantee your employees’ safety, and strongly urge you to take all necessary measures for their safety,” according to a letter sent to Reuters and AFP.
The head of RT Arabic, Maya Manna, said there was no contact with correspondents and photographers operating in the Palestinian enclave as of Friday evening. The sole message came from an RT stringer in the area, describing a “very violent bombing.”
“I don’t know what to do with my children and my family. Everyone is afraid, everyone is terrified, and there is screaming everywhere in the Gaza Strip,” Masoud, a local reporter, told RT.
According to an NBC News crew member, who was also able to message colleagues, “all internet, electricity and everything” has been cut off. “The situation we’re in is difficult, so difficult and very dangerous. We’re being extensively shelled by artillery and by air,” the unnamed staffer said.
The UN children’s agency also lost contact with their colleagues in Gaza, with UNICEF chief Catherine Russel saying she was “extremely concerned about their safety and another night of unspeakable horror for 1 million children in Gaza.”
The international healthcare charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said there was no contact with some of their Palestinian colleagues.
“We are particularly worried for the patients, medical staff and thousands of families taking shelter at Al Shifa hospital and other health facilities,” MSF said, expressing deep concern over the situation around one Gaza’s biggest medical centers.
Israel previously accused Hamas of turning hospitals into “headquarters for their terror,” referring specifically to Al Shifa, and even published an “illustrative video” which supposedly points out the “different locations in and under the hospital which are being used to plan and implement terrorist activities.”
Meanwhile Hamas claimed that by cutting off communications from the Gaza Strip, Israel is attempting to “cover up the crimes of the occupation without any oversight or accountability,” and tries to “create an image of victory,” a senior official, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera.
war crimes on a scale never seen.
like the so called ” vax”.
US war ships sailing to the mediterranean.
Curse the US and curse israel.
Elon Musk is moving his Starlink satellites into position over Gaza and the West Bank to allow relief and humanitarian agencies to communicate with the outside world and one another! Good on Elon!!!
That move has once again pissed-off Bibi and his murderous, persecuting Zionist stooges.
AND- there isn’t a damned thing Bib can do about it!
Note to Elon- wear body armour, as no doubt the Mossad and Zelensky have put you on a hit list.
Be VERY aware of your surroundings..!
“GAZA SUFFERS NEAR-TOTAL INFORMATION BLACKOUT”
So what else is new? There has been an information blackout on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians my entire life and I was born the same year 750,000 villagers were driven at gunpoint from their homes and their villages reduced to rubble by self-declared terrorists. 75 years of bad-faith negotiations by Israel and the neo-con U.S. have eliminated and chance of a two-state resolution and made just one course inevitable. If Jews in Israel wish to remain (and there are many who would agree if given the chance) they need to heed the advice of Shahid Bolsen https://youtu.be/moNx1N3V7vM
https://youtu.be/yBumTNZvVvk
For Israel to exist in the Middle East, Israel must integrate into the Middle East. This is not a radical idea. Many Israelis have embraced it – Uri Avnery, Matti Peled and his children, Miko and Nurit Peled-Elhanan, even Moshe Dayan. Many American Jews including Jewish Voice for Peace, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Phil Weiss are also on board.
https://youtu.be/CAbzV40T6yk
We know Hamas is on board:
“Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion “the people of the book” who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us – our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people.
We shall never recognise the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else’s sins or solve somebody else’s problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.”
· Khalid Mish’al is head of the political bureau of Hamas
Why is it that none of the other Arab States want anything to do with Hamas? Why aren’t they coming to the aid of the Palestinians??? I Egypt shares a border with Palestine. Why aren’t Palestinians going there? Just asking!
I believe that the Hospital in Gaza that was bombed, was built by the Israeli’s with a deep under ground bunker which was supposed to be for the shelter of the patients but has been taken over by Hamas & used as their HQ !
Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood with Isis & Hezbollah. Terrorist organizations that practice extremely repulsive repugnant
behavior’s which they know full well will be distressing to the rest of the world as well as Jews. Hamas is extremely clever at playing the victim & exploiting the squeamishness of normal people. eg Using children as human shields, & sick hosp patients are bombed while the terrorists are safe in the bunker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MnwX49UDiM&t=12s