Israel massed its troops on Sunday for a ground offensive in the bombed north of the Gaza Strip, determined to wipe out Hamas on the ninth day of the war triggered by an attack by this Palestinian Islamist movement, the deadliest ever committed on its soil .
“We are deployed along the Gaza Strip with our ground forces, preparing for the next stage of the operation,” army spokesman Jonathan Cornicus said on Sunday. The army claims to be awaiting a “political decision”.
One million inhabitants of this Palestinian territory, which has 2.4 million, have been displaced since the start of the conflict and Israeli strikes, the UN announced on Sunday.
And Israel continues to urge Gazans living in the north of the territory to flee to the south as quickly as possible, accusing Hamas, which opposes this evacuation, of preventing civilians from leaving.
Israel says it is targeting the northern city of Gaza to destroy the center of operations of the Palestinian Islamist movement, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. The army announced on Sunday the death in strikes of a third Hamas military leader, responsible according to it for the October 7 attack.
But also in the South, where displaced people are flocking by the tens of thousands, lacking everything, the strikes continue, according to residents. In Rafah, at dawn, a doctor’s house “was targeted, the whole family was wiped out,” said a neighbor, Khamis Abu Hilal.
More than 1,300 people were killed in Israel during the attack by Hamas commandos, mainly civilians, including children, and 126 people kidnapped by Hamas, according to the latest figures provided Sunday by the army, which announced that it had found during incursions into hostage “corpses” territory. Hamas reported 22 hostages killed in Israeli strikes.
The Israeli response has killed more than 2,300 people, including more than 700 children, in the Gaza Strip, a poor territory controlled by the Islamist organization since 2007, and left more than 9,042 injured, according to local authorities.
“Humanitarian corridors”
On the other side of the Israeli barrier enclosing the Palestinian territory, the inhabitants of Sderot were also evacuated on Sunday by bus towards Eilat, further south, or Jerusalem, to the north, while new rocket fire coming from Gaza was reported. intercepted.
” It’s hard […] the fear with each alert, you have to leave, it’s better for the children,” says Helen Afteker, 50 years old.
The exodus of Gazans towards the south and the expected ground offensive in an overpopulated territory, now placed under strict siege, are generating criticism and concern within the international community.
Iran warned on Sunday that “no one can guarantee control of the situation and the prospect of a widening of the conflict” if Israel invades Gaza.
The White House indicated on Sunday that it feared an “escalation” and possible involvement by Iran. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to return to Israel on Monday for a second visit in a week, after a tour of six Arab countries.
In Riyadh, he stressed, on Sunday morning, the need to prevent “an extension of the conflict”.
The United States has dispatched a second aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean and its embassy in Israel said it was ready to evacuate American nationals on Monday by boat from the port of Haifa to Cyprus.
Pope Francis called on Sunday for the “urgent” opening of humanitarian corridors for residents of the Gaza Strip, subject to an Israeli blockade for more than 15 years and now deprived of water, electricity and water supplies. food.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has equated the ongoing “displacement” with the exodus of some 760,000 Palestinians to the creation in 1948 of the State of Israel, with Egypt and Jordan opposing the move. any further dispersal of Palestinians from their lands.
Tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border
The risk of the conflict spreading to neighboring Lebanon, the south of which is de facto controlled by the pro-Iranian Hezbollah ally of Hamas, is raising fears.
One person was killed and others were injured on Sunday in northern Israel by gunfire from Lebanon, the Israeli army said, adding that it had struck the territory of the neighboring country in retaliation. It closed the border area to civilians.
The army said on Saturday that it had killed “several terrorists” trying to infiltrate at this border. Hamas confirmed the death of three infiltrators on Sunday.
Israel also indicated that it had struck Syria with artillery on Saturday evening, after air alerts in the part of the Golan Heights annexed by Israel in 1967.
At the Rafah border crossing, between Egypt and Gaza, humanitarian aid flows from several capitals, but does not get through.
This only passage between Gaza and the outside world which is not under Israeli control remains closed, bombarded several times by Israeli fighters.
And foreigners or people with dual nationality who flock there cannot leave, like Ibrahim al-Qarnaoui, a 77-year-old Swiss-Palestinian, surprised by the conflict while on vacation with his family. If he gets stuck, he will return to “live or die” in the family home, he says.
“Errors”
According to the NGO Reporters Without Borders, the conflict also cost the lives of 10 journalists.
On Friday, a Reuters videographer was killed and six journalists from AFP, Reuters and Al-Jazeera injured in bombings in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army said it was “investigating” the responsibilities, with the Lebanese army accusing it of being responsible for the shooting.
At dawn on October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel by land, sea and air from Gaza.
They killed more than a thousand civilians, spreading terror in a barrage of rockets. About 270 people, authorities said, were shot or burned in their cars at a music festival.
The Israeli government’s national security adviser acknowledged on Saturday “errors” by the intelligence services ahead of the attacks.