The Israeli army continued its bombings on Thursday on the Gaza Strip, notably on Khan Younes and the Kerem Shalom crossing point, at a time when negotiations and negotiations continue to obtain a truce in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Thursday morning, according to images from AFPTV, Khan Younes, the largest city in the south of the territory under siege since October 9, where the Israeli army had already indicated on Monday that it was intensifying its operations, was once again the target of bombings, visible to the plumes of smoke rising above its roofs.
According to the Hamas government, an Israeli strike also targeted the Kerem Shalom crossing point, between Israel and the Gaza Strip, killing four people, including the director of the crossing, Bassem Ghaben.
Israel has promised to destroy Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, in retaliation for the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by the Islamist movement on its soil, which killed around 1,140 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli toll. Around 250 people were also taken hostage, of whom 129 are still detained in Gaza, according to Israel.
The Hamas government, for its part, announced on Wednesday that Israeli military operations had left 20,000 dead in Gaza since the start of the war, including at least 8,000 children and 6,200 women.
“Worrying information”
On the ground, the Israeli army, which has lost 137 men since the start of its ground operations on October 27, assured Thursday that its air force had struck 230 targets in Gaza over the last 24 hours in the Palestinian territory besieged since on October 9.
On the ground, its soldiers discovered weapons in a school in Gaza City, also assured the Israeli army, which regularly accuses Hamas of using civilians as “human shields” and of hiding its fighters or its centers. of command in schools or hospitals, which the Palestinian Islamist movement denies.
On Wednesday, she claimed to have discovered a network of tunnels used by “senior leaders” of Hamas in Gaza City (north) and located “in direct proximity to shops, government buildings, residences and a school”.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, for its part, called for the opening of an investigation by Israel into “the possible commission of a war crime” by its armed forces in Gaza, saying it had received “disturbing reports” regarding the deaths of “11 unarmed Palestinian men” in Gaza City.
“They all have to go back”
On the diplomatic front, efforts are continuing on several fronts to try to achieve a new truce.
A first one-week break at the end of November allowed the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinians held by Israel and the delivery of aid to the Palestinian territory subject to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
Ofir Engel, 18, himself a former hostage released during this truce, returned Wednesday for a ceremony with relatives and families of hostages in Kibbutz Beeri, the site of his kidnapping during the October 7 attacks.
“One of the most difficult moments was when the terrorists plunged us into total darkness, with bombs constantly falling all around us,” he said. “I was there and every moment the hostages are there, they are in danger. […] They all have to go home now. »
As part of ongoing negotiations, Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh traveled to Cairo on Wednesday to discuss a new “temporary one-week truce in exchange for the release by Hamas of 40 Israeli prisoners, women, children and men,” explained a source close to the movement to AFP.
Ziad al-Nakhala, the leader of Islamic Jihad, another Islamist movement that fights alongside Hamas and holds hostages, will also go to Cairo early next week, according to a source within the movement.
At the same time, Israel is maintaining a dialogue with Qatar and the United States to try to reach a truce allowing the release of hostages.
But the positions of the two camps still remain very far apart: Hamas demands a complete cessation of fighting as a prerequisite for any negotiation on the fate of the hostages, and Israel is open to the idea of a truce, but rules out any cease-fire. fire before the “elimination” of Hamas, in power since 2007 in Gaza.
“Where are we safe?” »
Tough negotiations must also continue on Thursday at the UN Security Council, which has postponed since the beginning of the week a vote on a resolution intended to accelerate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, but likely to be a new American veto if it uses too strong terms.
The United Nations services continue to warn of the deep humanitarian crisis shaking Gaza. Half of the population there suffers from extreme or severe hunger, and 90% are regularly deprived of food for an entire day, according to Ocha.
The war has caused immense destruction in this territory, most hospitals are out of service and 1.9 million people, or 85% of the population, according to the UN, have fled their homes.
“The assault by the Israeli occupying forces against the health system in Gaza is taking the most sadistic forms,” criticized Francesca Albanese, the United Nations rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, on X busy.
“Where are we safe?” Where should we go? “, asked AFP on Wednesday, a Palestinian who fled northern Gaza for Rafah, after a strike near the school where he took refuge in this southern town. “There is no place else to go, we are trapped.”
The situation in Gaza is also fueling tensions in the region, particularly in the West Bank, on the Lebanese-Israeli border, or in the Red Sea, where Yemeni Houthi rebels threaten ships they consider linked to Israel.
On Thursday morning, the Lebanese National News Agency said an octogenarian woman was killed and her husband injured in an Israeli bombardment on a border village in southern Lebanon, from where Hamas ally Hezbollah launched several overnight attacks on Israel.