Israel carried out intense bombardments on Monday on the besieged Gaza Strip, where the war has left nearly 10,000 dead, according to Hamas, in almost a month while ground fighting rages despite pressing calls for a humanitarian truce .
According to the Hamas government, in power in the Palestinian territory, the night’s strikes killed more than 200 people in the Gaza Strip, shelled relentlessly in retaliation for the bloody attack launched on October 7 against Israel by the Islamist movement. .
“These are massacres! They destroyed three houses on the heads of their inhabitants, women and children, we have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble,” Mahmoud Mechmech, 47, who lives in the al-Machaala neighborhood, told AFP. in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.
On Sunday evening, the sky over Gaza continued to be streaked with lightning and mushrooms of yellow and red fire. The Israeli army announced that it would carry out “intensive” strikes and warned that they would last “several days”.
In parallel with its air raids which have transformed entire neighborhoods into fields of ruins, Israel has been waging fierce ground battles against Hamas since October 27, which it has sworn to “annihilate”.
The most intense fighting is taking place in the north of the territory, where Gaza City is located, now surrounded and which, according to Israel, houses the “center” of Hamas.
According to General Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli army, the soldiers cut the territory into two: “Gaza south and Gaza north”.
The army launched a new call on Monday morning for civilians to leave the northern Gaza Strip, saying soldiers would thus be “less limited” in their operations.
“We will then be able to dismantle Hamas, stronghold by stronghold, battalion by battalion, until we achieve the ultimate goal, which is to rid the Gaza Strip — the entire Gaza Strip — of Hamas,” said a spokesperson.
The army announced on Monday that it had “taken possession” of a Hamas command post in Gaza City. Images showed tanks moving among the ruins of a building.
“This has to stop”
Faced with a death toll that increases day by day, the leaders of the main UN agencies called on Sunday for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”.
“It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” they wrote, also calling on Hamas to release the more than 240 hostages it has held since October 7.
The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, whose country is opposed to a ceasefire which he believes would benefit Hamas, repeated on Sunday “the commitment of the United States to the delivery of vital humanitarian aid” in Gaza.
The American Secretary of State continued his regional tour to Turkey on Monday, where he met his counterpart Hakan Fidan, to try to defuse this country’s anger against the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Denouncing an “immoral massacre”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cut off all contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and also decided not to meet Mr. Blinken.
In Iran, a powerful supporter of Hamas, President Ebrahim Raïssi accused the United States on Monday of “encouraging” Israel to “kill and perpetrate cruel acts” against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, the latest official Hamas report counted 9,770 dead, including 4,800 children, in Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
These bombings hit civilians hard, in this small territory of 362 square kilometers populated by 2.4 million inhabitants, placed since October 9 under a state of “complete siege” by Israel, which has cut off water deliveries, electricity and food.
The Gaza Strip was already subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, took power there in 2007.
The Israeli army again accused Hamas on Monday of building tunnels under hospitals, schools and places of worship to hide fighters and plan attacks, an accusation that the Islamist movement has repeatedly denied .
In Israel, more than 1,400 people were killed, mostly civilians killed on October 7 during the Hamas attack, of violence and scale unprecedented since the creation of Israel in 1948.
At least 30 Israeli soldiers, according to the army, have been killed since the ground operation began.
“No bread, no water”
The war has displaced 1.5 million people within the Gaza Strip, according to the UN.
“The situation is very difficult. There is no bread, no water, nothing, not even salt water. We saw dead bodies (on the road), the children were very scared,” said Zakaria Akel, who was fleeing with his family to the south.
In the south of the territory, near the border with Egypt, hundreds of thousands of displaced people, some who came on foot from the north, are massed in very precarious conditions.
This border partially opened on October 21 to allow humanitarian convoys to pass through the Rafah crossing point. A total of 451 trucks had passed as of Saturday, according to the UN.
Several hundred foreigners, dual nationals and wounded (1,100, according to the UN) were also able to leave Gaza via Rafah last week. But those evacuations have been suspended since Saturday after Israel refused to allow passage of some injured Palestinians, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said.
Palestinian icon arrested
Jordan’s King Abdullah II announced the Jordanian Air Force’s airdrop of emergency medical aid to Gaza early Monday, intended for a Jordanian field hospital.
After almost a month of war, the international community still fears an extension of the conflict, particularly in the West Bank, where Antony Blinken visited on Sunday and called for an end to “extremist violence” against the Palestinians in this territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
More than 150 Palestinians have been killed there by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers since October 7, according to the Palestinian Authority.
On Monday, the Israeli army announced the arrest of Ahed Tamimi, a 22-year-old figure in the Palestinian cause around the world, during a raid in the West Bank.
Tensions are also high in East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel, where an Israeli soldier was seriously injured on Monday by an assailant who was killed, according to Israeli police.
On Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, there are daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas and supported by Iran.
Since October 7, 81 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP count, including 59 Hezbollah fighters. Six soldiers and two civilians were killed on the Israeli side.