New bombings by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip left dozens dead on Thursday, according to Hamas, two days after the elimination of a senior leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Lebanon, which raised fears of a conflagration in the region.
Nearly three months after the start of the war, particularly intense strikes and artillery fire hit Khan Younes during the night, a large town in the south of the Gaza Strip that has been particularly targeted by the Israeli army for several days. , according to an AFP correspondent.
At the morgue of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younès, the bodies of victims are lying on the ground. In tears, Baha Abu Hatab leans over the bodies of his nephews, according to images from AFPTV.
“They were evacuated to an agricultural field, where they built a tent to protect themselves from the cold, but Israeli airstrikes hit them while they were sleeping. For what ? Because they are children? Because they threaten Israel and the United States? “, he laments, talking about his loved ones.
The Hamas Health Ministry, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, reported dozens of deaths and more than 100 injured in Israeli strikes overnight.
The Israeli army, for its part, reported strikes targeting in particular “terrorists who wanted to place an explosive device near soldiers” and a Hamas weapons depot in Khan Younes.
Sirens announcing rocket fire also sounded Thursday in Ashkelon, in southern Israel, a town that the al-Quds brigades of Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, announced they had targeted.
New tour from Antony Blinken
Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas after its unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which left around 1,140 dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Hamas commandos also kidnapped around 250 people in Israel, more than 100 of whom were freed at the end of November during a week-long truce.
Since the start of hostilities, 22,313 people, mainly women, adolescents and children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the toll announced Wednesday by the Palestinian Islamist movement classified as a “terrorist” organization by the United States, Israel and the European Union.
Fears of this war igniting the Middle East increased further after the elimination on Tuesday of Hamas number 2, Saleh al-Arouri, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, by a strike attributed to Israel.
Israel did not claim responsibility for this elimination, but was immediately singled out by Hamas and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, another Islamist movement whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel against any further escalation after Saleh’s death. al-Arouri.
In Washington, an American official also affirmed that the elimination of Saleh al-Arouri in a Lebanese Hezbollah stronghold was caused by an Israeli strike.
In this context, the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, is preparing to undertake a new tour of the Middle East in the hope of easing tensions. He will leave Washington Thursday evening for his fourth trip to the region since the start of the war in Gaza, with a stop planned on Israeli soil, according to an American official.
On Wednesday, a double explosion which left 84 dead in Iran near the tomb of General Qassem Soleimani, former architect of Iranian operations in the Middle East, the same day when Iran commemorated the fourth anniversary of his death, further accentuated the tensions.
Iran claimed that Israel and the United States were behind the attack, allegations immediately refuted by Washington and which have not been commented on by Israel.
85% of the population displaced
In Israel, the army chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, indicated that his troops were on alert on the border with Lebanon, an almost daily scene of exchanges of fire where Hezbollah lost in total 129 fighters in clashes since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Since the start of the conflict, tensions have also increased in Syria and Iraq, where American bases have been targeted, but also in the Red Sea, where the Houthi rebels in Yemen are carrying out attacks to slow down maritime traffic in “support” in Gaza.
In the Palestinian territory, “Hamas still has significant capabilities in Gaza,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby declared in Washington.
“We believe that reducing and defeating Hamas’s capabilities to carry out attacks in Israel is an absolutely achievable goal for Israeli military forces. It can be done, militarily. Will his ideology be eliminated? No. And is the group likely to be annihilated? Probably not,” he added.
In addition to airstrikes and ground fighting, Gazans face severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine as humanitarian aid trickles into the besieged territory.
In the Gaza Strip, some 1.9 million people, or 85% of the population of 2.3 million, have had to leave their homes to flee fighting and bombardments, according to the Office for the Coordination of Affairs humanitarian aid agency (OCHA).