The Gaza Strip today remains the scene of deadly airstrikes and fierce fighting, after the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas threatened not to release the hostages it is holding "alive" without "negotiations".
On the night of Sunday to Monday, an AFP journalist reported that there were heavy airstrikes in Khan Younis, a new focus of the war, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
And Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another armed group operating mainly in Gaza, reported heavy fighting in the Gaza City sector, claiming it blew up a house in which Israeli soldiers were searching for an underground tunnel.
The Israeli military spoke today of rocket fire from Gaza and yesterday of "fierce" fighting in areas of Gaza City and Khan Younis, where Palestinian fighters "emerge from underground tunnels", detonate "explosives" and fire "anti-tank rockets". .
"I don't want to say that we are using all our power, but we are using a lot of power and we are securing significant results," Israeli Chief of Staff General Herchi Halevi said yesterday on Sunday.
The official death toll of the Israeli army surpassed 100 dead today — reaching 101 — the general staff said.
Position of power;
The war erupted after an unprecedented raid by Hamas militants on October 7 in areas of southern Israel centered on the Gaza Strip, which killed some 1.200 civilians, the majority of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
A week-long truce in late November allowed the release of more than 240 of the roughly 137 hostages taken by Hamas and other Palestinian organizations in the attack. After the ceasefire, the Israeli army assures that its aim is to change the balance of power in the field and free the XNUMX hostages still in the Palestinian enclave.
Hamas, for its part, warned yesterday that none of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip will leave "alive" unless there is a negotiation and if its conditions are not "satisfied".
"Neither the fascist enemy and its arrogant administration, nor its supporters will be able to take the prisoners alive without exchange and negotiation and without meeting the conditions of resistance," said Abu Ubaydah, the spokesman for the Ezzedine al Brigades. Qassam, the armed wing of Hamas.
"There is no safe location"
The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is squeezed into an ever-shrinking perimeter as the health system threatens to "collapse", the World Health Organization (WHO) warned yesterday, while the death toll continues to mount.
According to the health ministry of Hamas, which has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, nearly 18.000 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since the Israeli army's offensive began, the vast majority of them women, children and teenagers.
In Gaza, shelling is turning entire neighborhoods into rubble and the population is desperately trying to escape by moving south. According to the UN, 1,9 million people have been forcibly displaced, in other words 85% of the population has been forced to leave their homes.
The Israeli military has ordered the civilian population of the Gaza Strip to go to "safe zones" to escape hostilities.
"The occupying power's unilateral declaration that areas without infrastructure, food, water, health services (…) are 'safe zones' means nothing," commented the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings. Israel has made it clear that it has no intention of renewing Canada's visa, which it accuses of not being "impartial".
Thousands of Gazans are fleeing as they can — in cars, trucks, carts, even on foot. "We're going from one area to another and there's no safe place," Abu Mohammed said despairingly on his way to Rafah.
The city on the — closed — border with Egypt has been transformed into a vast camp for displaced people, hundreds of tents hastily erected with wood, burlap and cloth.
At a time when the health system in the Gaza Strip is "on its knees", according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the international organization yesterday adopted a decision that requests immediate humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave.
The amount of food, medicine and fuel entering the Gaza Strip remains completely insufficient to meet needs, the UN says, and is distributed only in Rafah.
Wounds in Syria
Following the failure of the UN Security Council to approve a draft resolution calling for an immediate "humanitarian ceasefire" after the US vetoed it, the General Assembly is expected to meet tomorrow on Tuesday to discuss the situation in the Strip of Gaza.
"A ceasefire at this time would do nothing but perpetuate the problem as Hamas is always alive and planning to carry out more attacks like the one on October 7," US Secretary of State Anthony told CNN. Blinken.
The war has also escalated violence in the occupied West Bank, where more than 260 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or Jewish settlers since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Authority, as well as elsewhere in the wider region, amid concerns of regional conflagration.
Israel's air force launched overnight raids on various sectors of the suburbs of Damascus, the capital of Syria, according to the official Syrian news agency SANA. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, targets were "facilities of Hezbollah", the armed Shiite movement in Lebanon.
Although he did not comment on the strikes in the suburbs of Damascus, Chahal, the Israeli army, spoke yesterday Sunday of fire from Lebanon against northern Israel, which "retaliated" its forces, and of raids against the "core" of Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas and Iran, sworn enemy of the Jewish state.
The services of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also claimed last Sunday night that the Israeli secret services and the Cypriot authorities prevented an "Iranian" attack plan against "Israeli and Jewish targets" in Cyprus.
Sources close to the Cypriot police told AFP and KYPE that two persons of Iranian origin were arrested and that an investigation is being conducted into a "terrorist case".
Source: protothema.gr