Fierce fighting took place on Monday in the Khan Younes sector, in the south of the Gaza Strip where the Israeli army is concentrating its operations against Palestinian Hamas, despite calls for a pause in the clashes, which are increasing at the level international.
In the morning, witnesses told AFP of heavy artillery fire, advances of Israeli tanks and violent clashes near al-Aqsa University and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes.
The war entered its 108e day Monday was triggered by the attack of unprecedented scale and violence launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 on Israeli soil, which resulted in the death of more than 1,140 people, mostly civilians. , according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Some 250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, including around a hundred released at the end of November in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. According to the same count, 132 hostages are still in the territory, of whom 28 are believed to have died.
Israel has vowed to “annihilate” Hamas, which came to power in the Gaza Strip in 2007. Its military operations there killed 25,295 people, the vast majority women, children and adolescents, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Hamas.
Refugee with his family with a number of other displaced Gazans in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes where Hamas officials are hiding, according to Israel, Mahdi Antar expects an Israeli “assault”. “But leaving the hospital is dangerous, because the artillery bombardments continue,” Mr. Antar, 21, told AFP.
“Shells are falling next to the university,” describes Younis Abdel Razek, 52, installed in a tent with 16 members of his family within the building.
“Errors”
Delivering its “version of the facts” on October 7 in an unprecedented communication operation, this movement classified as terrorist by Israel, the United States and the European Union recognized on Sunday “errors” having caused the death of civilians, and demanded “the immediate cessation of Israeli aggression” in Gaza.
According to Wall Street JournalAmerican intelligence estimates that so far, Israel has killed “around 20% to 30%” of Hamas fighters, still far from its goal of destroying the movement.
According to this daily, the United States, Qatar and Egypt, countries which played the role of mediator during the truce in November, are trying to convince Israel and Hamas to agree on the release of the hostages in exchange of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
During the night, relatives of the hostages and supporters demonstrated near the official residence of the Israeli Prime Minister to demand an agreement of this type for their release, while the challenge to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu intensifies in Israel.
On October 7, “this government and this Prime Minister completely abandoned us […] We ask the government to play its role, to propose an agreement, to see it through and to bring back the remaining hostages alive,” said a demonstrator, John Polin, father of a hostage.
“Sole survivor”
But Mr. Netanyahu “categorically” rejected Hamas’ “conditions” on Sunday, remaining deaf to the growing international calls for a humanitarian truce and the preparation of a post-war including the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israel cannot build peace “only by military means”, insisted Monday the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, before meeting separately in Brussels with the heads of Israeli and Palestinian diplomacy, in an attempt by the 27 to draw a “ global approach” to bring peace to the region.
The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, spoke in the morning in Tel Aviv with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, before a meeting with Mr. Netanyahu.
In the besieged Gaza Strip, where at least 1.7 of the 2.4 million inhabitants have had to flee their homes, many massing in the south, the humanitarian and health situation is catastrophic according to the UN.
Abdelrahmane Iyad, injured in Gaza and now being treated aboard the French helicopter carrier Dixmude, docked in Egypt, did not have time to leave his house when it was hit.
“I was with my parents, my brother, my sister, my second sister and her husband as well as their daughter. They are all dead. I am the only survivor,” he told AFP.