Fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas rages on Friday in Gaza ahead of an extraordinary vote at the UN on a cease-fire, two months after the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement which triggered a fierce response having caused thousands of deaths.
After an initial phase in the north of the small, overpopulated Palestinian territory, the Israeli army this week extended its operations to the south, where nearly two million civilians have taken refuge.
In the old city of Gaza, in Khan Younes, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat… Clashes continue on Friday in and around several towns in the Gaza Strip, between land operations and aerial or naval bombardments.
The toll of Palestinian victims continues to rise and exceeds 17,000 deaths, more than two thirds of them women and minors, according to the Hamas health ministry.
The war was sparked by the bloody attack on Israel carried out on October 7 by Hamas, during which 1,200 people were killed according to Israeli authorities, and some 240 people taken hostage.
The army said on Friday that it had struck more than 450 targets in 24 hours and killed “many terrorists”.
In the north of Khan Younes, army bombings razed the al-Katiba neighborhood, noted an AFP journalist.
The army said Thursday it had discovered an arsenal at al-Azhar University in Gaza City, and a tunnel that connected it to a school “a kilometer away.”
She asked residents of several localities around Gaza to evacuate further west, before further operations.
According to the UN, more than half of homes are destroyed or damaged in the Palestinian territory.
The wounded continue to arrive by the dozens, many of them children, like a Palestinian who arrived bleeding at a hospital in Khan Younes, whom a nurse was trying to resuscitate on his stretcher.
“We were in an area considered safe. […] After the strike, we suddenly heard screams,” says Mohammed Jaarar, resident of Khan Younès.
The armed wing of Hamas, in power in Gaza, for its part claimed responsibility for new rocket fire towards Israel, which was mostly intercepted.
“Blatant revenge”
Images of Palestinians in their underwear, blindfolded under the guard of Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip, were broadcast on Israeli television on Thursday.
The army said it was “investigating” to “verify who (among them, Editor’s note) is linked to Hamas”, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union and the United States, among others.
Ezzat al-Risheq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, denounced “a blatant revenge, a crime”.
The United States, firm supporters of Israel, are increasingly concerned about the heavy Palestinian civilian losses.
“It remains imperative that Israel make the protection of civilians a priority,” declared US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, referring to a “gap” between declared intention and “results”.
Comments supported by American President Joe Biden in a telephone interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the White House.
“Things cannot continue as they are,” added German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during a press conference in Dubai as part of COP28.
A total of 93 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting in Gaza, including on Thursday the son of Gadi Eisenkot, former army chief of staff and member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet, according to the army .
His family, in tears, paid tribute to him Friday during a burial ceremony.
Hostage families are still desperately trying to secure the release of the 138 people still held in Gaza.
Four representatives of Israeli hostage families are going to Paris on Friday, before Brussels and Strasbourg, in order to push the Europeans to put pressure on Qatar, the main mediator between the belligerents.
“Even though I believe my sister is alive, I have this fear that she is not. I have no information or proof on his condition,” confided Yanit Ashkenazi, whose sister Doron Steinbrecher is one of the captives, interviewed by AFP.
In Jerusalem, Muslim Friday prayers took place under heavy police surveillance, who placed age restrictions on access to the grounds of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Jerusalem. Islam.
“Catastrophic situation”
In Rafah, on the border with Egypt, the lives of thousands of Palestinians trying to escape the fighting are becoming more and more difficult, with humanitarian aid deemed very insufficient by the UN, and which is arriving in dribs and drabs. .
Since October 9, Israel has imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, causing serious shortages of water, food, medicine and electricity.
Fuel, necessary to operate generators in hospitals and water desalination equipment, is also lacking.
On Thursday, “69 trucks carrying humanitarian aid and 61,000 liters of fuel returned to Gaza from Egypt,” said the United Nations agency responsible for humanitarian coordination (OCHA), which considers these quantities very insufficient.
Faced with a “catastrophic situation in the Gaza Strip”, the UN Security Council must decide on Friday on a call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, in a vote with an uncertain outcome .
The head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, invoked article 99 of the Charter of the United Nations which allows the secretary general to “draw the attention of the Security Council” to a file which “could endanger the maintenance of international peace and security”, a first in decades.
Since the start of the war, the Council managed to pass a resolution that called for “humanitarian pauses and corridors” in Gaza, but not a “ceasefire”, which the United States opposes. stadium.
West Bank and Lebanon
Outside Gaza, violence also continues in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot and killed six Palestinians in a refugee camp on Friday, the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry reported.
At least 264 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, according to the Palestinian Authority.
The war has also reignited tensions on the border between Israel and Lebanon, where there are daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.
“We think there’s going to be a war here. We know there will be one. And for that, we are all worried and we are preparing,” Efi Dayan told AFP.
Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah on Thursday that if it “chooses to start a total war, it will transform Beirut and southern Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Younes.”