Violent fighting raged Thursday in and around the largest cities in the Gaza Strip, as the war between the Israeli army and the Palestinian movement Hamas entered its third month.
Dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles entered Gaza’s Old City. The Israeli army also says it has carried out operations in Khan Younes, the largest city in the south of the small, overpopulated Palestinian territory, claiming to have “killed Hamas terrorists and struck dozens of terrorist targets”.
The Israeli army has tightened its noose around the main urban centers where it is tracking Hamas fighters two months to the day after the bloody and unprecedented attack perpetrated by the Islamist movement from the Gaza Strip. It left 1,200 dead in Israel, mainly civilians, and there are still 138 hostages in Gaza, according to the Israeli authorities.
Everywhere in the narrow strip of land bordered by the sea, the wounded flocked Thursday to overwhelmed hospitals, including children, treated on the ground, as in that of Al Aqsa in Deir el Balah, in the center of the strip of Gaza, noted an AFP journalist.
Hamas authorities, in power in Gaza since 2007, reported six deaths and dozens injured in an attack on a house in Jabalia, five in the Nuseirat camp.
“Devastated, overwhelmed”
Two dead children were found Thursday morning in Rafah after the bombing Wednesday evening, including that of a child with a small body wrapped in blankets, noted an AFP journalist.
Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip towards Israel also peppered the sky all day Wednesday.
The civilian population is being pushed to move to an increasingly cramped area in Rafah, along the Egyptian border.
Thousands of Palestinians who have taken refuge there are seeking to flee the fighting and are setting up makeshift camps, trying to survive in extreme destitution.
“We arrived here, homeless, it rained on us last night, there is nothing to eat, no bread, no flour,” Ghassan Bakr told AFP.
“We are devastated, mentally overwhelmed,” laments Amal Mahdi, who survived a raid. “We need someone to support us, find a solution to get us out of this situation.”
Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, among others, and relentlessly bombed the Gaza Strip in retaliation, then launched a ground operation on October 27.
The Israeli army’s operations caused 16,248 casualties, 70% of them women and those under 18, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Collapsed medical sector
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross, the medical sector in Gaza is no longer holding up.
On Wednesday evening, there were urgent international calls to urge better protection of civilians, particularly from the UN and the G7.
Predicting a “total collapse of law and order soon” in Gaza, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again called for a humanitarian ceasefire.
Mr. Guterres used for the first time in his mandate a rare procedure, article 99 of the United Nations Charter, which allows him to “draw the attention” of the Security Council to a file which “could put into question endangers the maintenance of international peace and security.
According to several diplomats, the Security Council is due to meet on Friday to consider this appeal.
Israel’s scathing response did not take long: Guterres’ mandate is a danger for world peace,” the head of Israeli diplomacy Eli Cohen replied on X (ex-Twitter), estimating that the activation of Article 99 and the call for a ceasefire “constitute support for the terrorist organization Hamas.” »
The Israeli government, however, authorized the delivery of a “minimal supplement” of fuel to Gaza to avoid a “humanitarian collapse” and epidemics, two days after a call to this effect from its main ally, the United States.
According to the UN, 1.9 million people, or around 85% of the population, have been displaced by the war in the Gaza Strip where more than half of the homes are destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombings.
The town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, is the only place where humanitarian aid is still distributed, in limited quantities, according to the UN.
On Wednesday, 80 trucks carrying food and fuel accessed it, compared to 170 per day on average during the truce in force from November 24 to 30 and 500 before October 7, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA) in its daily update.
“Sinouar hides underground”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday evening that Israeli forces were “surrounding the house of (Yahya) Sinouar,” the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in Khan Younes.
“Sinouar is hiding underground,” said Daniel Hagari, an army spokesperson, referring to Hamas tunnels under Gaza.
Yahya Sinouar, 61 years old, 23 of whom spent in Israeli prisons, has not been seen publicly in Gaza since October 7. He is considered the architect of the attack that day.
The Israeli army also announced on Wednesday the discovery in the north of the territory, “in the heart of the civilian population”, near a clinic and a school, “a very important weapons depot”. She also said she had killed “half of the commanders” of Hamas to date.
On its Telegram channel, the Palestinian Islamist movement affirmed that its armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades “is fighting violently against the occupying forces on all lines of incursion in the Gaza Strip”.
While the war rages in Gaza, Israel is also increasing military operations in the West Bank where at least 258 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, according to a report from the Palestinian Authority.
In Israel, families of hostages are trying to keep pressure on the Israeli government to free their loved ones.
According to the Israeli government, 138 hostages are still being held in Gaza, after the release at the end of November as part of a seven-day truce of 105 people kidnapped, including 80 in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
In Tel Aviv, on Wednesday evening, relatives of the victims of the October 7 attack strolled in meditation in an identical reconstruction of the vast site of the Tribe of Nova music festival – also called Supernova – site of a of the worst massacres of October 7.