(Rafah) The Israeli army wants to use “all means” to bring back to Israel the hundreds of hostages, alive or dead, still captive in the Gaza Strip, its spokesman told a group of foreign journalists in the city of Rafah, devastated by the fighting, on Friday.
The hostages “are all in [la bande de] Gaza, held by the [mouvement islamiste palestinien] “Hamas in cruel conditions, like in this tunnel,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said at the entrance to a conduit leading to the underground where the army says it found six of the captives summarily executed by their captors about two weeks ago.
“We must do everything, everything that is possible, and [utiliser] “We will do everything we can to bring them home,” he added during a brief visit organized for a group of foreign journalists – including an AFP videographer – who were on board with the Israeli army inside the Gaza Strip.
Due to restrictions imposed by Israel since the outbreak of war more than eleven months ago, international journalists are unable to travel independently to this Palestinian territory devastated by bombing and fighting.
PHOTO SHARON ARONOWICZ, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Israeli soldiers stand at the entrance of a tunnel in Rafah, Gaza Strip, September 13, 2024, as part of the war between Israel and Palestinian militant groups.
The announcement in early September of the discovery of the six dead hostages sparked a wave of grief and anger in Israel, where critics have mounted to accuse the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not doing enough to reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas that would allow the hostages to be released.
The war was triggered by a Hamas attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including hostages who died or were killed in captivity, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
The Israeli retaliatory military campaign on the Gaza Strip has left at least 41,118 dead, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry in Gaza, which did not specify the proportion of fighters and civilians killed.
“Labyrinth”
In the far south of the Gaza Strip, adjoining the border with Egypt, the town of Rafah, where Israeli army troops have been engaged on the ground since the beginning of May, appears devastated, according to images from the AFPTV journalist, subject to Israeli military censorship before their broadcast.
Apart from the soldiers, the streets are deserted, and offer nothing as a landscape but a succession of facades of gutted or completely destroyed buildings or houses.
The dull hum of Israeli drones is incessant. In the distance, we can occasionally hear bursts of automatic weapons fire.
PHOTO SHARON ARONOWICZ, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The city of Rafah, where Israeli army troops have been engaged on the ground since the beginning of May, appears devastated.
“There is a maze of tunnels here […] under the houses. Hence the destruction,” Admiral Hagari said.
“To destroy [le Hamas et retrouver les otages] “We have to take control of this underground system,” he adds, to justify the duration of the fighting.
The army also showed journalists on board Friday the “Philadelphia corridor,” a buffer zone running inside the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt.
The question of whether or not it should be controlled by the Israeli army is one of the contentious points in the indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas through mediation led by Egypt, the United States and Qatar.
Hamas is demanding that Israeli forces eventually evacuate the entire territory of the Gaza Strip. Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, has repeatedly said that Israel must maintain control of this corridor, recently paved by the Israeli army, as AFP was able to see on Friday.
Deadly Ramla Explosion: Israeli Police Arrest Minor Suspect
Israeli police announced Friday that they had arrested a 17-year-old suspect in their investigation into a car bombing that killed four people the previous day in Ramla, central Israel.
The suspect is a resident of this mixed Jewish-Arab town, according to a police statement without giving further details on his identity or the circumstances of his arrest.
On Thursday, police said the explosion at the car, parked in front of a shop and a residential building, was “apparently due to a settling of scores between Arab criminals.”
The four people killed were identified by Israeli media as a 50-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter, as well as a 10-year-old boy related to them, and a 24-year-old woman whose two-month-old son was seriously injured.