Dozens of people, according to Hamas, were killed in the Gaza Strip, the south of which was shelled on Saturday by the Israeli army, on the 99th day of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Since Friday, the conflict has spread to Yemen, with two episodes of American and British strikes against Houthi rebels who attack maritime transport in the Red Sea in “solidarity” with Gaza. China denounced the American-British operations on Saturday, affirming through its representative to the United Nations, that “this does not contribute to the protection of the safety and security of commercial vessels and the freedom of navigation”.
On the ground in Gaza, an AFP correspondent reported intense nighttime bombings in the South, in Khan Younes, which has become the epicenter of the fighting, and in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, where hundreds of thousands Gazans have fled the clashes further north.
Israeli strikes left more than 60 dead, mostly women and children, and dozens injured, according to the Health Ministry of Hamas, the movement which has controlled the small, besieged and overpopulated Palestinian territory since 2007.
At Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, bereaved residents try to identify their loved ones, in an improvised morgue, on the ground. In front of the alignment of bodies, a man holds the remains of a small child, wrapped in a white shroud.
“It’s happening in an area that the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom present as safe,” says Abu Saif, displaced “three or four times” since the start of the conflict.
Bassam Arafa, who fled the Bureij refugee camp, in the center of the coastal strip, holds up a photo of a little girl on his phone: “this little girl, what did she do to them? She died starving, with a piece of bread in her hand.”
The Israeli army announced that it had destroyed dozens of rocket launch sites and killed four “terrorists” in Khan Younes by air strikes. In the center of the Gaza Strip, she also says she “eliminated armed terrorists” in a “Hamas command post”.
In Khan Younès, “the night was very difficult” told AFP forty-year-old Nabila Abu Zayed, who spent it “crowded with hundreds of displaced people in the corridors of the maternity ward” of Al-Nasser hospital.
The rain and cold, which fell on the region, made daily survival even more difficult for her family, who camped in the hospital courtyard, she explains. “But where to go? »
Partial return of communications
International organizations tirelessly denounce the humanitarian disaster endured by the 2.4 million Gazans, 1.9 million of whom have had to flee their homes.
On Friday, communications and Internet services were also completely cut off, due to the Israeli side, according to the Palestinian operator Paltel. Communications were partially restored on Saturday afternoon, according to an AFP journalist.
The lack of fuel also led to the shutdown of the main generator at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah (center), according to a source in the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Israel opposes the entry of fuel among humanitarian aid, citing the risk of diversion by Hamas, which it classifies as “terrorist” like the European Union and the United States.
Entering its 99th day on Saturday, the war was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil, which left around 1,140 dead, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count from Israeli assessment.
“Continue to live”
Some 250 people were taken hostage by Hamas, including around a hundred released during a truce at the end of November.
Military operations carried out since then in the Gaza Strip by Israel, which has sworn to annihilate the Palestinian Islamist movement, have killed 23,843 people and left more than 60,300 injured, according to the latest report on Saturday from the Hamas Ministry of Health. .
In Rafah, strikes and deprivations did not prevent Afnan and Moustapha from uniting their destiny, even if the ceremony was kept to a minimum. “We are all experiencing the same tragedy. But we must continue to live, and life must continue,” Ayman Shamlakh, uncle of the groom, told AFP.
At the same time, negotiations are continuing on the fate of the hostages. Their relatives held a new gathering in Tel Aviv on Saturday, around a simulation of the tunnels peppering Gaza and used by Hamas for its operations.
Those detained will receive medication “in the coming days” under an agreement negotiated through Qatar, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced Friday. A source close to Hamas confirmed to AFP that talks were taking place, but not their conclusion.
“It’s not enough,” judges Ella Ben Ami, mobilized in Tel Aviv for her father: “I want him at home, in a good care service, not treated by Hamas.”
The war in Gaza is also fueling violence on the Israeli-Lebanese border, in the occupied West Bank and in Syria and Iraq, where attacks against American bases have increased.
In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army said it had killed three people on Friday who attacked the Jewish colony of Adora, about twenty km from Hebron. According to the Palestinian agency Wafa, they are a 19-year-old and two teenagers.
In a separate incident in the northern West Bank, a 19-year-old Palestinian died after an Israeli army strike in the Tulkarem area, according to Wafa.
After two historic days of hearing, the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands, must also render its decision, possibly in the coming weeks, after accusations of “genocide” brought by South Africa against Israel for its operations in the Gaza Strip.
Israel dismissed them as “totally distorted” and “malicious” on Friday.
The Court will initially rule only on whether the fundamental rights of Gaza residents are currently under threat.