Israel urged the Palestinians to quickly evacuate the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, suggesting an upcoming ground offensive, a week after the unprecedented attack launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas.
On the eighth day of the war which has already left thousands dead, Israel announced the death of two Hamas military leaders: Mourad Abou Mourad, “responsible for a large part of the deadly offensive” of October 7, according to the army, and Ali Qadi, “who directed the inhumane and barbaric massacre of civilians in Israel.”
And the strikes continue on Palestinian territory, from where a barrage of rockets was fired in the morning towards central Israel. In the south of the Gaza Strip, in the town of Khan Younes, an injured little girl was pulled out of the rubble in the morning, notes an AFP photographer.
Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza on Saturday.
The Israeli army, which also carried out ground incursions into the Palestinian territory on Friday, indicated that it was preparing for “other significant combat operations” on Saturday.
Israel confirmed on Saturday the presence of “more than 120 civilians” held captive in Gaza, among around 150 hostages kidnapped by Hamas, which threatened to execute them. Hundreds of people remain missing, and bodies are still being identified.
At least 1,300 people, mostly civilians, including at least 130 foreign or dual nationals, have been killed in Israel since the attack, which traumatized the country, where it is compared to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
More than 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 724 children, according to local authorities, have died in the Gaza Strip, a small, impoverished and siege territory wedged between Israel and Egypt. Of these victims, 324 were killed between Friday and Saturday, authorities said.
According to Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel and in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, 26 hostages, including foreigners, were also killed in Israeli strikes, including nine in recent times. 24 hours.
“A window” to evacuate “without delay”
Pending a ground offensive, for which Israel said it was preparing, the army called on Gazan civilians in the north of the territory – 1.1 million people out of a total of 2.4 million inhabitants – to do not “delay” in evacuating to the south on Saturday.
There is a “10 a.m. to 4 p.m. window” on Saturday, Army spokesman Richard Hecht said. The army accused Hamas, which rejected the call for evacuations, of trying to block departures.
The movement is regularly accused by Israel of using civilians as human shields, while the prospect of a ground offensive in the heart of a densely populated territory appears terrifying.
Since Friday, thousands of residents have been fleeing by all means, their possessions piled up hastily, on trailers, carts, on motorbikes, by car, through the ruins.
The Hamas attack and the war it unleashed created an unprecedented shock wave in the region and beyond, stoking fears of an extension of the conflict, and of a humanitarian catastrophe for Gazans, subjected to a full siege, deprived of water, electricity or food supplies, cut off by Israel.
Investigation after the death of a journalist
“Even wars have rules,” recalled UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, calling for “immediate” humanitarian access to this small strip of land, subject to an Israeli blockade since 2006.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has also made “the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza a priority.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that a ground assault would lead to “absolutely unacceptable” civilian casualties.
Middle East heavyweight, Saudi Arabia, where American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is continuing a regional tour, announced that it was suspending discussions on possible normalization with Israel on Saturday.
Tension is also high on the northern border of the country, where the Israeli army announced in the morning that it had killed “several terrorists” who were trying to infiltrate, after striking a Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon during the night. , in response to an aerial “infiltration” and shooting.
A video journalist from the Reuters agency was killed and six other journalists from AFP, Reuters and Al-Jazeera injured on Friday in bombings in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army said it was “very sorry” about the death on Saturday, indicating “investigating”, without explicitly recognizing responsibility. The Lebanese army accused her of being responsible for firing “a rocket which targeted a civilian press car”.
“What to do and where to go?” »
Anger is also expressed in public opinion in countries in the region, where thousands of people demonstrated on Friday, notably in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Bahrain, in support of the Palestinians.
In the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, at least 16 Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli forces during rallies in solidarity with the Gaza Strip.
At dawn on October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in vehicles and by air from Gaza.
They killed more than a thousand civilians, sowing terror under a barrage of rockets during this attack on a scale not seen since the creation of Israel in 1948. Around 270 people, according to the authorities, were killed at a music festival.
Heartbreaking funerals follow one another in Israel, like those on Friday of a 52-year-old man, father of three daughters, shot dead in front of his family a week ago, in an attacked kibbutz.
In Abu Gosh, near Jerusalem, an Israeli Arab, mortally wounded on October 9 by a rocket fire, was buried.
After the attack, the Israeli army claimed to have recovered the bodies of 1,500 Palestinian fighters.
The Gaza Strip, a territory of 362 square kilometers, has been subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since Hamas took power there. Egypt controls its only opening to the world, the Rafah crossing point, which is currently closed.
According to a US official, Israel and Egypt gave the green light to let the Americans leave the Gaza Strip on Saturday through the Rafah crossing point.
On the Palestinian side of this border town, dozens of displaced Gazan families have taken over a United Nations school, piling up laundry, mattresses and packages in the classes and the playground, noted an AFP journalist.
Further north, thousands of displaced people are crowded into the courtyard of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younès. “It’s a disaster, there is nothing to eat, we don’t know where to sleep, we don’t know what to do and where to go,” laments Juma Nasser, a forty-year-old.
More than 423,000 Palestinians have already left their homes, and 5,540 homes have been destroyed, according to the UN.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas likened such a “displacement” to a “second Nakba” (“Catastrophe” in Arabic), in reference to the exodus of some 760,000 Palestinians at the creation of the State of Israel. .