The Israeli army carried out new deadly strikes on Wednesday on the besieged town of Khan Younes, in southern Gaza, where residents and displaced people are trying to shelter from some of the most violent bombings and fighting in two months of war against Hamas.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip live “in utter horror,” denounced the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk.
As night fell, thick clouds of black smoke and flames continued to rise from Gaza. On Wednesday, trails drawn by rockets fired from the small Palestinian territory towards Israel also dotted the sky.
Engaged since October 27 in a ground offensive against Hamas in the north of Gaza, in parallel with its campaign of strikes, the Israeli army extended its ground operations to the entire territory and announced Tuesday that it had surrounded Khan Younes, the largest city in the south.
Across the small, crowded territory, the bodies of more than 200 Palestinians killed in the bombings have been taken to hospitals in the past 24 hours, and more than a hundred injured, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health and ‘according to hospital sources.
Thousands of residents continue to desperately flee towards the south and the neighboring town of Rafah, bordering Egypt, responding to orders from the Israeli army.
“The whole city suffers from incessant destruction and bombardment. Many people arrive from the north in disastrous conditions, without shelter, in search of their children,” Hassan Al-Qadi, a resident of Khan Younes displaced in Rafah, told AFP.
“We want to understand. If they want to kill us, let them surround us in one place and eliminate us all together. But pushing us to move from one place to another is not fair,” he added.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, 16,248 people, more than 70% of them women, children and adolescents, were killed in two months in the Gaza Strip by Israeli bombings.
Hostilities were triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza which left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians, according to the authorities.
In retaliation for the bloody Hamas attack, Israel promised to destroy the Islamist movement in power in Gaza since 2007, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
“Very important” arms depot
On Wednesday, the Israeli army announced the discovery in the north, “in the heart of the civilian population”, near a clinic and a school, “a very important weapons depot” of the entire band of Gaza.
It contained hundreds of rocket launchers, dozens of anti-tank missiles and explosive devices, long-range missiles that could reach central Israel, dozens of grenades and drones, according to the army.
She sees this as “additional proof of Hamas’ cynical use of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip as human shields”.
She also claimed to have killed “half of the brigade commanders” of Hamas to date.
A total of 83 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the offensive, according to the army.
Sources from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another armed group in Gaza, told AFP on Wednesday that their fighters were trying to obstruct the advance of Israeli troops in Khan Younes and areas east of the city. , as well as in nearby refugee camps.
Help cut
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Rafah is now the only place in Palestinian territory, placed since October 9 by Israel under total siege, where humanitarian aid is still distributed, in limited quantity.
The Israeli army drops leaflets every day on Khan Younes warning of an imminent bombing, ordering residents to leave their neighborhood.
But the UN, which calculated that 28% of Gaza’s territory now falls under these evacuation orders, deemed it “impossible” to set up secure zones for civilians.
“No place is safe in Gaza. Neither hospitals nor shelters nor refugee camps. No one is safe. Nor the children. Nor health care workers. Nor the humanitarians. This blatant disregard for the basics of humanity must end,” said UN emergency aid coordinator Martin Griffiths.
In a street in Khan Younes, dazed men, women and children searched the ruins on Wednesday. “A missile hit and destroyed the entire area. Nothing is intact anymore,” a survivor, Abou Ahmad Abou Ouda, told AFP.
“Where do you want us to go?” »
In Rafah, Palestinians who had fled Khan Younes, less than 10 kilometers away, established a makeshift camp on Wednesday, setting up tents with canvas or plastic sheeting and wooden slats.
They organized their survival: branches collected here and there to make a fire, semolina in bowls for their only food.
“We arrived here, homeless, it rained on us last night, there is no food, no bread, no flour,” Ghassan Bakr told AFP.
“Where the hell do you want us to go?” ! », exclaims Khamis Al-Dalou. “We left Khan Younes and now we are in tents in Rafah, without a roof, without a wall.”
On a sidewalk, children throw themselves on a large pot of semolina cooked by a charity, scraping the bottom with their plastic boxes and bowls.
According to the UN, 1.9 million people, or around 85% of the population, have been displaced by the war in the Gaza Strip where more than half of the homes are destroyed or damaged.
According to the Israeli government, 138 hostages among the approximately 240 people kidnapped in Israel on October 7 are still being held in Gaza, after the release at the end of November as part of a seven-day truce of 105 hostages, including 80 in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Gang rapes, necrophilia
Demonstrations took place again in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening as almost every day to demand a permanent ceasefire and the release of captives held in Gaza.
The army demanded on Wednesday that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) be able to have access to these hostages.
“Every minute in captivity puts at risk” their lives, said army spokesman Daniel Hagari.
The director of UNICEF also condemned on Wednesday the “sexual violence” committed against Israeli women on October 7, which an Israeli government spokesperson considered late and insufficient because, according to him, it did not mention their perpetrators. Hamas gunmen.
“There are witness accounts and forensic evidence of violent rapes, gang rapes, pedophilia and even necrophilia […] “It is unforgivable that some still choose to deny or minimize” these crimes, said Eylon Levy, Israeli government spokesperson.