10/11/2023 10:45 pm (current 10/11/2023 10:50 pm)
Israeli counterattacks destroy entire neighborhoods in Gaza ©APA/AFP
Following Hamas’ major attack on the Israeli border area and Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip, deadly clashes also increased in the West Bank. Four Palestinians were shot dead in a clash with settlers and Israeli soldiers south of Nablus, the Health Ministry in Ramallah said on Wednesday. The Israeli army said soldiers in the area reported shots fired. The incident is being investigated.
It was initially unclear whether the dead belonged to a militant group. This means that 25 Palestinians have been killed in various incidents in the West Bank since Saturday.
The two Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they carried out massive rocket attacks in southern and central Israel on Wednesday. A hospital in Ashkelon, southern Israel, reported rocket fire. The hospital said these were fired from the Gaza Strip. There was damage to the building but no injuries, a spokeswoman said.
The Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, said it attacked the cities of Tel Aviv, Ashdod and Ashkelon, as well as communities near the Gaza Strip, with “heavy rocket fire.” The Izz ad Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said it fired a rocket at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport, where Israeli authorities reported no impact.
According to Hamas, at least 30 people were killed in new Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night, in the Palestinian territory. Hundreds of other people were also injured, the Hamas government’s media office told AFP news agency. There were several hundred Israeli airstrikes that night.
Dozens of homes, factories, mosques and shops were hit in the Israeli strikes, the media office said. According to an AFP correspondent, the Islamic University of Gaza, linked to the radical Islamist Hamas, was also bombed on Wednesday. According to a university spokesperson, several buildings in the complex were destroyed.
The Israeli military, for its part, confirmed new attacks on the Gaza Strip. Warplanes struck more than 200 targets overnight in a Gaza City neighborhood that Hamas used for its wave of attacks on Saturday. Israeli fighter pilots also destroyed a Hamas radar system. “The fighter planes destroyed an advanced radar system developed by the terrorist organization Hamas that was used to detect missiles over the Gaza Strip,” the army said in an X-post. Over the years, Hamas developed a network of high-quality cameras that were hidden in rooftop water containers and distributed throughout the Gaza Strip.
According to the army, the number of deaths in Israel due to major Hamas attacks has risen to more than 1,200. At least 3,000 other people were injured. Israel responded with massive airstrikes on the densely populated coastal strip. The number of Palestinians killed in Israeli counterattacks in the Gaza Strip rose to at least 1,100 on Wednesday. Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 5,300 other people were injured.
According to the UN, more than 260,000 people have fled their homes since the start of the Israeli counterattack. “More than 263,934 people in the Gaza Strip are believed to have fled their homes,” the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva said on Tuesday night. “That number will likely increase.”
The number of internally displaced people in the Gaza Strip is the highest since 2014, the UN office said. Almost 175,000 affected people found refuge in 88 UN-run schools. Some 14,500 people were reportedly housed in schools run by the Hamas government. Around 74 thousand refugees were welcomed by relatives or friends.
Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the US, EU and Israel, carried out the worst massacre of civilians since the founding of Israel on Saturday, in a major attack in the border area. Terrorists invaded cities on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah (Joy of Torah) and searched homes for victims. They shot men, women and children and kidnapped others in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised “revenge” on Sunday.
Colonel Berthold Sandtner of the National Defense Academy believes that an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip is possible at any time. All prerequisites for this have already been created, he said on ORF’s “ZiB2” on Tuesday evening. “Obviously, political approval for this is still lacking.” Sandtner expects Israel to move forward now “with a sledgehammer.” He also recalled that Israel announced that this time it wants to “shake Hamas to its foundations and eradicate it.”
US President Joe Biden promised the ally the support of the superpower. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urged Israel to respect international law. The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations described the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip and the total blockade of the Palestinian enclave controlled by the radical Palestinian organization Hamas as “nothing short of genocide”. “This blatant dehumanization and attempts to bomb a people into submission, use starvation as a method of war and end their national existence are nothing short of genocide,” writes Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour in a letter to the Council of UN Security, which the Portal news agency was able to view. “These are war crimes.”
Biden strongly condemned the Hamas attack on Israel in a televised speech. The country was going through a time of “pure, unadulterated evil,” he said. He promised more support.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants to visit Jordan and also Israel after the major Hamas attack. He will leave on Wednesday, the US State Department said in a statement on Tuesday. A spokesperson had previously said that Blinken would arrive in Israel on Thursday. The purpose of the trip to the Middle East is to talk about strengthening Israel’s security and “highlight the United States’ unwavering support for Israel’s right to self-defense”.
The US sent an aircraft carrier to Israel. Additionally, the US government said it had spoken with Israeli representatives about the possibility of establishing a safe corridor for civilians in the Gaza Strip. “We are focused on this issue,” said national security spokesman Jake Sullivan. The Israeli military claims to have received its first ammunition from American stockpiles.
The US currently sees no evidence of Iran’s direct involvement in the major attack on Israel carried out by the Palestinian radical Islamic organization Hamas. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday that Tehran has been a key supporter of Hamas for years. “But in this specific case, we have no evidence that there was any direct involvement in the planning or execution of this attack.”
Israel has called up 300,000 reservists, fueling speculation of a ground offensive. The government also announced that it will completely isolate the Gaza Strip. “Israel has the right to defend itself, but it must be in accordance with international law, humanitarian law,” said EU foreign policy chief Borrell. Referring to the blockade, he added: “Some decisions contradict international law.”
Terrorists carried out a massacre of Israeli civilians in border towns and at a music festival on Saturday in the name of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip. According to the army, the number of deaths is more than 1,200. At least 3,000 other people were injured.