(Rafah) The Israeli army carried out new deadly bombings on Saturday in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, and ordered new evacuations from this town in the south of the Palestinian territory, threatened by a major ground offensive.
While mediation efforts for a truce and the release of hostages seem to be getting bogged down, US President Joe Biden said on Saturday that a ceasefire was possible “tomorrow” in the war between Israel and Hamas if the Palestinian group released the hostages.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Palestinian boy sits near the rubble of a residential building destroyed in an Israeli strike in Al-Zawayda, in the central Gaza Strip, on May 11.
Joe Biden raised the subject after warning Israel on Wednesday that it would stop supplying it with artillery shells and other weapons if it attacked Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, while deploring that civilians were killed by the dropping of American bombs.
In recent hours, AFP journalists, doctors and witnesses have reported strikes across the Palestinian territory besieged and devastated by more than seven months of war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by an unprecedented attack by the movement. Palestinian Islamist against Israel on October 7.
PHOTO SAHER ALGHORRA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Palestinian doctors treat a girl injured during an Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip on May 11 at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah.
The entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza has been virtually blocked according to the UN since Israeli troops entered eastern Rafah on Monday and took the border crossing point with Egypt, blocking a key entry point for convoys transporting vital aid to a population threatened with famine.
At least 21 Palestinians were killed in bombings in the central Gaza Strip and taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, bringing the death toll to 34,971, mostly civilians in the Palestinian territory since the start of the war, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Bodies covered in white cloth lie on the ground in a hospital courtyard. A man leans over a body bag, clutching a dust-covered hand. A corpse’s feet protrude from a blanket.
“Where should we go?” »
In Rafah, where according to the UN there are some 1.4 million Palestinians, most of them displaced by Israeli bombings and fighting, intense airstrikes targeted an area close to the crossing point, according to witnesses.
Bombings also hit the northern Gaza Strip, a poor territory about 40 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide where some 2.4 million people live.
PHOTO HATEM KHALED, REUTERS
A man sits on a vehicle loaded with goods to evacuate Rafah on May 11.
The army reported “dozens of terrorists killed in eastern Rafah”.
Defying international warnings against a major offensive in Rafah, Israeli troops have been carrying out incursions into the east of the city since Tuesday, after several evacuation orders were issued by the army to residents of the area.
About 300,000 Palestinians have left the eastern neighborhoods since the first evacuation order on May 6, according to the army.
A similar order on Saturday said designated areas in eastern Rafah had been “the scene of Hamas terrorist activities.”
Palestinian journalists were then seen dismantling their tents and packing up their equipment, preparing to leave the area.
” We are lost. What do we have to do ? Where should we go? “, deplores Wissam Yassin, a journalist.
Farid Abou Eida, who had fled Gaza City for Rafah, is forced to find a new refuge. “The situation is becoming more and more dangerous and the bombings are getting closer. We don’t know where to go. There is no longer a safe place. »
Death of a hostage according to Hamas
In the northern Gaza Strip, the army issued evacuation orders for Jabaliya and Beit Lahia, and reported a “major operation” in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. According to her, Hamas is “trying to rebuild” in several areas.
The evacuation orders were described as “unacceptable” by European Council President Charles Michel, who called on Israel not to carry out a “ground operation in Rafah”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of a “colossal humanitarian catastrophe” in the event of an assault on Rafah, a city considered by Israel to be the last stronghold of Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
Recalling the opposition of the EU on this point, the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell judged the evacuation of the population massed in Rafah to “unsafe areas” to be “intolerable”. .
The armed wing of Hamas announced on Telegram the death on Saturday of an Israeli hostage, held in Gaza since the attack on October 7, and of whom it had broadcast images of him alive a few hours earlier.
She blamed his death on “injuries sustained after Zionist (Israeli) warplanes targeted the place where he was being held more than a month ago.”
When contacted, the army did not immediately wish to comment on the information.
PHOTO JACK GUEZ, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday evening to demand the return of the hostages.
In the evening, thousands of people demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand the return of the hostages. “Bring them back now!” “, we read on a sign brandished by a demonstrator.
Tensions at Eurovision
On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza carried out an attack against Israel, killing more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data. More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 128 remain captive in Gaza, of whom 36 are believed to have died, according to the army.
In response, Israel has promised to wipe out Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
Despite the reopening on Wednesday of the Kerem Shalom crossing, neighboring Rafah, closed by Israel for three days after Hamas rocket fire, the delivery of aid remains “extremely difficult”, according to the Humanitarian Affairs office of the UN (Osha).
On Saturday, more rockets were fired from Rafah towards the Kerem Shalom aid crossing near Rafah, according to the army.
Thousands of kilometers away, the war in Gaza which is shaking up several universities around the world, also made its presence felt at the Eurovision Song Contest held in Malmö in Sweden, against the backdrop of protests against Israeli participation in the competition. .