Israel and Hamas at war, day 24 | Violent ground fighting in the Gaza Strip

Violent ground fighting took place on Monday, inside the Gaza Strip, between Hamas fighters and the Israeli army, whose tanks reached the outskirts of Gaza City, on the 24^e day of the conflict triggered by the bloody attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israel.

The Gaza Strip, bombarded relentlessly by the Israeli army in retaliation for this attack which also saw Hamas take more than 230 people hostage, has been subjected since October 9 to a “complete siege” which deprives its 2.4 millions of inhabitants with water, food and electricity, and could constitute “a crime” according to the International Criminal Court.

This conflict has already left thousands dead, mostly civilians, and threatens to engulf the entire region.

Since Friday, Israel has intensified its bombings on Palestinian territory and its soldiers are also operating on the ground there.

On Sunday, the Jewish state even announced that it had increased the number of its troops and the scale of its operations inside the territory, with the aim of “wiping out” Hamas, Israel, but also the United States. United and the EU, considers it a “terrorist” organization.

And “more than 600 targets” have been struck in the last 24 hours, the Israeli army announced Monday morning.

Among these are “weapons depots, dozens of anti-tank missile launch positions”, according to the same source.

“Dozens of tanks” near Gaza City

Shortly before, the Israeli army had claimed to have killed “dozens of terrorists who had barricaded themselves in buildings and tunnels and tried to attack them” during the night. A plane guided by soldiers on the ground targeted a building “with more than 20 Hamas terrorists inside,” she added. Hamas reported “intense fighting” in the north of the Gaza Strip, without giving any figures.

Due to the lack of journalists on site, it is impossible for AFP to establish one from an independent source.

During the morning, witnesses told AFP that they had seen “dozens” of Israeli tanks enter a neighborhood on the edge of Gaza City, 1.5 to 2 km inside Palestinian territory.

“They cut the Salahedine road (linking the north to the south of the territory) and are shooting at any vehicle traveling there,” said one of them.

In Israel, according to the authorities, more than 1,400 people have died since October 7, mainly civilians killed on the day of the unprecedented attack perpetrated by Hamas.

The Islamist movement, for its part, claims that more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since that date in Israeli bombings.

In the Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation is “disastrous” according to the UN, thousands of buildings have been razed and more than half of the 2.4 million inhabitants (approximately 1.4 million) have been forced to move according to the same source.

Calls are increasing to allow aid to flow to this territory which had already been subject to an Israeli blockade since 2007, the date of Hamas’s takeover.

On Sunday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan said “that preventing the delivery of aid can constitute a crime”.

33 aid trucks on Sunday

“Israel must ensure without delay that civilians receive food, medicine,” added Mr. Khan, after going to the Rafah border crossing, separating Egypt from Gaza, where people are piling up. international aid.

Thirty-three aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, the largest convoy since the first trucks on October 21, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) reported. In total, 117 trucks have passed since that date, according to a report published Monday.

But this aid is insufficient, underlines Ocha, which fears “a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation” and “civil unrest”.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned on Sunday of a collapse of “public order” in the Gaza Strip, the day after the looting of warehouses and distribution centers of food aid.

In Rafah (south), Souleimane al-Houli, interviewed by AFP, can only deplore his helplessness in the face of the long queue in front of his bakery. “I can’t give bread to everyone. The bakery only produces 30 batches per hour. »

Humanitarian concern also concerns the situation of hospitals in Gaza. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the surroundings of one of its clinics were bombed several times, endangering patients and the thousands of civilians who came to take refuge there.

“We received threats” from Israel to “immediately evacuate the al-Quds hospital” in Gaza City (north) “because it was going to be bombed,” its director, Bachar Mourad, told AFP.

Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals to hide weapons or fighters, which Hamas denies.

Regardless, “we reiterate that it is impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without putting their lives at risk,” wrote World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Four Palestinians killed in West Bank

On Saturday, Mr. Netanyahu announced the start of a “second stage of the war” aimed at “destroying the military capabilities and leadership of Hamas”, and recovering the hostages, whose relatives live in “absolute uncertainty”. of their fate, according to their spokesperson Haim Rubinstein.

Four women who were in Hamas custody have been released to date.

On October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated from Gaza onto Israeli soil, where they carried out the deadliest attack since the creation of Israel in 1948. They kidnapped 239 people, including “many foreign workers”, according to the latest figure provided by Israel.

While the international community fears a regional conflagration, the Israeli army announced Monday that it had struck several targets in Syria in response to rocket fire.

Tensions are also high on the Israeli-Lebanese border, where there are almost daily exchanges of fire between Israel and pro-Palestinian armed groups, including Hezbollah.