Gaza: Hamas leader calls on Blinken to act to end war

Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh called the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken, touring the Middle East for the fourth time since October 7, to focus on “the end” of the Israeli offensive on the Strip. Gaza.

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“We hope […] that he will focus this time on ending the aggression, with a view to ending the occupation of all Palestinian land,” Mr. Haniyeh said in this video released Friday evening by his office.

“We hope that Mr. Blinken was able to learn the lessons of the last three months and understand the degree of errors made by the United States with its blind support” for Israel, adds the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement, who lives in exile in Qatar.

“The blood shed in the massacres and horrific destruction cannot lead to security and stability until the Palestinian people obtain their freedom and their independent and sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the leader further warned. of Hamas.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after the unprecedented attack launched by the Palestinian movement on the south of the country on October 7 and leading to the death of 1,140 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count. based on the latest official Israeli figures.

Around 250 people were kidnapped in this attack and taken to Gaza. Around a hundred of them were released during a truce at the end of November.

Since October 7, Israel has relentlessly shelled the Gaza Strip, a cramped and densely populated territory on which it launched a ground offensive on October 27: these military operations left 22,722 people dead, mostly women and minors, according to a recent report. report from the Hamas Ministry of Health on Saturday.

The American Secretary of State has started a new regional tour in Turkey during which he intends to plead for increased aid for Gaza and ways to avoid conflagration in a tense regional context.

The humanitarian situation in the besieged territory is regularly described as “catastrophic” by the United Nations. On Friday, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the Gaza Strip had become “a place of death and despair”, and “simply […] uninhabitable”.


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