IDF troops raiding Ibn Sina Hospital near Jenin refugee camp in West Bank UN warns of starvation in Gaza

The Israel Defence Forces have surrounded the Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin and are demanding that staff and patients leave the building.

Israeli forces "surrounded the Ibn Sina hospital, located near the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, and demanded that it be evacuated." The TV channel also notes that the hospital's doctors are refusing to comply with the military's demand.

According to Al Mayadeen, IDF soldiers "stormed the emergency room of Ibn Sina Hospital and interrogated the medical staff."

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the Gaza Strip now faces a “massive” food gap and widespread hunger while nearly the entire population of the Palestinian enclave is in “desperate” need of food assistance.

In a statement on November 16, WFP executive director Cindy McCain said food and water supplies are “practically non-existent” in Gaza and that “civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation.”

With communications out and in the absence of fuel, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it was impossible to coordinate humanitarian aid truck convoys.

“If the fuel does not come in, people will start to die because of the lack of fuel. Exactly as from when, I don’t know. But it will be sooner rather than later,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

The United States opposes Israeli air strikes on hospitals in the Gaza Strip and is concerned about the strikes on a Jordanian hospital, Matthew Miller, head of the press service of the US State Department said.

"I will say that we are concerned about these reports. We are concerned about it and we don't want airstrikes on hospitals. We want the hospitals to be protected," Miller said. - 'As for the Jordanian medical personnel who were injured in the attack on the field hospital in Gaza, we are deeply concerned that they were injured."

Miller said the US believes the Palestinian radical Hamas movement continues to use hospitals to house militants, but does not want to see airstrikes on medical facilities. "We don't want to see shootings in hospitals, we want patients to be safe. So we have called for the evacuation of patients when possible, and we would support international humanitarian organisations in the evacuation so that patients are brought to safety," he said.

The State Department spokesman emphasised that Israel would conduct limited military operations near the hospitals. "Given what happened at al-Shifa Hospital, they will now try to carry out operations in a way that minimises harm to civilians, so that only Hamas militants are affected, not civilians," he stressed.

Meanwhile, at least 144 trucks with international humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip on November 16 through the Rafah crossing, the Office for the Coordination of the Government of Israel in the Palestinian territories announced on X.

According to the report, 88 trucks delivered to the enclave foodstuffs (1,765 tonnes), 21 - medical equipment (198 tonnes), 18 - water (340 tonnes), 7 - essentials for the work of temporary accommodation centres (110 tonnes), 10 - mixed cargoes (192 tonnes).

At least 11,470 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, but the death toll has not been updated for days due to the collapse of the enclave’s health system, which collected data. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas’s attacks stands at about 1,200.