United States President Joe Biden has announced $100 million for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
In a post on his official X handle, he explained that the money would support over one million displaced and conflict-affected Palestinians.
“I just announced $100 million for humanitarian assistance in Gaza and the West Bank. This money will support over 1 million displaced and conflict-affected Palestinians. And we will have mechanisms in place so this aid reaches those in need – not Hamas or terrorist groups”, the post read.
In another post, he disclosed, “My team and I have touched down in Israel to stand in solidarity with the Israeli people following Hamas’s terrorist attack”.
He had earlier affirmed that the United States is on the side of Israel in the conflict with the State of Palestine.
“I have come to Israel with a simple message: You are not alone. As long as the United States stands – and we will stand forever – you will not be alone”.
Ahead of Biden’s arrival in Tel Aviv, the Israeli capital, on Wednesday, protests erupted across the Middle East a day earlier following the deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital, with Israeli and Palestinian officials trading accusations over who was to blame.
Hundreds of people were likely killed in the blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the centre of Gaza City, where thousands were sheltering from Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.
Palestinian officials have blamed Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident, but Israel has insisted it was not responsible.
In a televised news conference on Wednesday, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed a lack of structural damage at the hospital proved the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were not involved in the explosion. He claimed IDF intelligence showed that Palestinian Islamic Jihad – a rival Islamist militant group to Hamas in Gaza – caused the explosion when one of its rockets launched at Israel misfired.
Hagari also said the IDF had intelligence of “communications between terrorists” of rockets misfiring, which included mention of the hospital.
Islamic Jihad denied Israel’s assertions describing them as “false and baseless” and claimed it does not use public facilities such as hospitals for military purposes, according to a statement Wednesday.
CNN reported that it could not independently confirm what caused the explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital.
The blast marks a dangerous new phase in Israel’s war with Hamas, which threatens to spill over regionally, and has added to fears that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is spiraling “out of control”.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra described “unparalleled and indescribable” scenes after the blast.
He said: “Ambulance crews are still removing body parts as most of the victims are children and women. Doctors were performing surgeries on the ground and in the corridors, some of them without anesthesia”.
Video geolocated by CNN from inside the al-Shifa Hospital, where some victims of the blast were taken, shows chaotic scenes with injured people packed into the crowded facility, doctors treating the wounded on the hospital floor and an emergency worker calling out as he carries an injured child.
In Lebanon, hundreds of protesters gathered in the square that leads to the US Embassy in Awkar, which is just north of the capital Beirut, and tried to break through security barriers, according to a CNN team there.
Protests continued on Wednesday when pro-Palestinian demonstrators had skirmishes with police near the US Embassy. Police fired tear gas and used water cannons against the protesters, according to local media and video footage released by AFP.
The US Embassy in Beirut advised Americans to avoid the Awkar area due to the protests, in a security alert on Wednesday.
Antisemitic attacks have also been on the rise. In Germany, security services are investigating after two Molotov cocktails were thrown in the direction of a Berlin synagogue in the early hours of Wednesday.
The fallout from the blast threatens to derail US diplomatic efforts to ease the humanitarian suffering in Gaza, where concerns are mounting over Israel’s deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the enclave.
More than a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,478 people and injured 12,500 in Gaza, according to Palestinian authorities.
President Biden’s high-security wartime visit to Tel Aviv to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marks his most forceful public show of support for Israel since the brutal October 7 Hamas attacks, in which the Islamist militant group killed at least 1,400 people and took more than 150 hostages, including children and the elderly.
Biden told the Israeli leader in a meeting on Wednesday that the hospital attack “appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.
“But there’s a lot of people out there not sure”.
Biden was scheduled to visit the Jordanian capital Amman after his trip to Tel Aviv, though a White House official said the trip was “postponed”.
Jordan canceled a planned Wednesday summit between Biden and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pulled out of the meeting earlier Tuesday in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
“There is no point in doing anything at this time other than stopping this war,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera Arabic early Wednesday. “There is no benefit to anyone in holding a summit at this time”.
Several nations, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have released statements condemning Israel following the explosion. Pakistan called it “inhumane and indefensible” and Palestinian observer to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israeli officials were being dishonest in blaming Islamic Jihad.
