NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / World

Israel-Hamas War: Gaza communication, phone networks and internet collapse, threatening to worsen humanitarian crisis

By Wafaa Shurafa. Jack Jeffery, Lee Keath
AP·
16 Nov, 2023 08:51 PM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Hostilities in the Gaza Strip have entered their second week with Israel vowing to step up attacks. Video / AP / Getty

Internet and telephone services collapsed across the Gaza Strip on Thursday for lack of fuel, the main Palestinian provider said, bringing a potentially long-term communications blackout even as Israel signalled its offensive against Hamas could next target the south of the territory, where most of the population have taken refuge.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops for a second day searched Shifa Hospital in the north for traces of Hamas. They displayed guns they say were hidden in one building, but have yet to release any evidence of a central Hamas command centre that Israel has said is concealed beneath the complex. Hamas and staff at the hospital, Gaza’s largest, deny the allegations.

The military said it found the body of one of the hostages abducted by Hamas, 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss, in a building adjacent to Shifa, where it said it also found assault rifles and RPGs. It did not give the cause of her death.

The communications breakdown largely cuts off Gaza’s 2.3 million people from one another and the outside world, worsening the severe humanitarian crisis in southern Gaza, even as Israeli airstrikes continue there. International pressure is growing on Israel to allow pauses in fighting to let in aid, with food, water and electricity increasingly scarce and UN officials saying relief efforts are endangered by fuel shortages.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is crowded into southern Gaza, including hundreds of thousands who heeded Israel’s calls to evacuate to the north to get out of the way of its ground offensive. If the assault moves into the south, it is not clear where they would go because Egypt refuses to allow a mass transfer onto its soil.

The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack into southern Israel in which the militants killed over 1200 people, mostly civilians, and captured some 240 men, women and children. Weiss, the woman whose body was found on Thursday, is the third hostage confirmed dead, while four others have been freed and one rescued.

Israel responded to the attack with a weeks-long air campaign and a ground invasion of northern Gaza, vowing to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.

More than 11,470 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The official count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The war has inflamed tensions elsewhere. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint on the main road linking Jerusalem to Israeli settlements, killing a soldier and wounding three people.

The three attackers were killed, according to police, who said the assailants had assault rifles, handguns and hatchets, and were preparing a large-scale attack in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Some guns, but so far no tunnels under the hospital

A day after storming into Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli troops continued searching the complex. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the troops searched underground levels of the hospital on Thursday and detained technicians who run its equipment.

The hospital has not had electricity for nearly a week, and staff say they have been struggling to keep alive 36 premature babies and 45 dialysis patients with equipment not functioning.

Shifa’s director, Mohamed Abu Selmia, told Al-Jazeera a dialysis patient died on Thursday, adding that 650 wounded patients and 5000 displaced people are in the hospital amid the raid.

Israel said its soldiers brought medical teams with incubators and other supplies, though Shifa staff said incubators were useless without fuel. Gaza’s Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, died before the raid after the emergency generator ran out of fuel on Saturday.

During previous days of fighting in the nearby streets, there was no report of Hamas fighters firing from inside Shifa, and no fighting when Israeli troops entered on Wednesday.

Israel faces pressure to prove its claim that Hamas set up its main command centre in and under the hospital, which has several buildings over an area of several city blocks.

So far, it has shown only a small number of weapons it says were uncovered in an MRI lab. The military released video from inside Shifa showing three duffel bags, each containing an assault rifle, grenades and Hamas uniforms, as well as a closet containing several assault rifles without ammunition clips. Associated Press could not independently verify the Israeli claims.

In recent weeks, Israel depicted the hospital as the site of a major Hamas headquarters. It released satellite maps that specified particular buildings as command centres or as housing underground complexes. It released a computer animation portraying a subterranean network of passageways and rooms filled with weapons and fuel barrels. The US said it has intelligence to support Israeli claims.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The allegations are part of Israel’s broader accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields across the Gaza Strip — which it says is the reason for the large numbers of civilian casualties during weeks of bombardment.

An Israeli soldier fires his weapon in Gaza. Photo / AP
An Israeli soldier fires his weapon in Gaza. Photo / AP

Looking south

The military says it has largely consolidated its control of the north, though fighting continues there. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday the ground operation would eventually “include both the north and south. We will strike Hamas wherever it is”. He did not give a timeframe.

Israeli forces dropped leaflets on Thursday telling Palestinians in areas east of the southern town of Khan Younis to evacuate. Similar leaflets were dropped over northern Gaza for weeks before the ground invasion.

Strikes continued in the south on Thursday. In the city of Deir al-Balah, a funeral was held for 28 people killed in an overnight bomb that levelled several buildings.

A southern offensive would bring Israeli forces into a zone packed with the vast majority of Gaza’s population. They include some 1.5 million people displaced from their homes, living in overcrowded UN shelters or with other families.

In past weeks, the Israeli military has called on people to move to a “safe zone” in Mawasi, a town on the Mediterranean coast a few square kilometres (square miles) in size, where humanitarian aid could be delivered.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The heads of 18 UN agencies and international charities on Thursday rejected the creation of a safe zone and said they would not participate.

In a joint letter, the groups said concentrating civilians in a zone while hostilities continued was too dangerous. They called for a ceasefire and unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid and fuel for Gaza’s population. The groups included the UN humanitarian chief, the children’s agency Unicef, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation.

An explosion at a site the Israeli military says is the residence of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP
An explosion at a site the Israeli military says is the residence of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP

Read More

  • Israel-Hamas war: Militants release two hostages in ...
  • Israel-Hamas war: Heartbreaking reason Gazan parents ...
  • Israel-Hamas war: Grandmother killed, Hamas uses her ...
  • Hamas surprise attack out of Gaza stuns Israel and ...

Palnet, the main Palestinian telecoms provider, said the network in Gaza ground to a halt on Thursday after running out of fuel. Palnet’s general manager, Abdulmajeed Melhem, said the company has made international appeals for fuel, but the network can be restored only if Israel lets supplies in.

That raises the potential for a long-term communications blackout. Gaza authorities have been able to get the system working after three previous shutdowns.

The previous blackouts traumatised Palestinians, leaving them unable to call ambulances after strikes hit homes or reach family members to ensure they were alive. Aid workers say the shutdowns wreak havoc on humanitarian operations and hospitals. Some Palestinians manage to keep up communications using satellite phones or SIM cards that reach Israeli or Egyptian networks.

The cut-off also makes it harder for international media to cover events on the ground.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Israel has refused to allow fuel into Gaza, saying it will be diverted to Hamas. It let in a small amount on Wednesday so the UN agency for Palestinian refugees could continue bringing limited aid from neighbouring Egypt. But the fuel cannot be used for other purposes, including for hospitals.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from World

World

'One Big Beautiful Bill': House passes US$3.4t tax and immigration bill after tight vote

03 Jul 08:53 PM
Premium
World

California is running out of safe places to build homes

03 Jul 08:00 PM
Premium
World

No one likes meetings. They’re sending their AI note-takers instead

03 Jul 07:00 PM

There’s more to Hawai‘i than beaches and buffets – here’s how to see it differently

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from World

'One Big Beautiful Bill': House passes US$3.4t tax and immigration bill after tight vote

'One Big Beautiful Bill': House passes US$3.4t tax and immigration bill after tight vote

03 Jul 08:53 PM

The bill raises the borrowing cap by US$5t, avoiding a debt default.

Premium
California is running out of safe places to build homes

California is running out of safe places to build homes

03 Jul 08:00 PM
Premium
No one likes meetings. They’re sending their AI note-takers instead

No one likes meetings. They’re sending their AI note-takers instead

03 Jul 07:00 PM
Indonesia ferry disaster: 6 dead, dozens missing in rough seas

Indonesia ferry disaster: 6 dead, dozens missing in rough seas

03 Jul 06:30 PM
From early mornings to easy living
sponsored

From early mornings to easy living

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP
search by queryly Advanced Search