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- Two Palestinian teenagers killed by Israeli gunfire in West Bank
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GAZA, Dec 6 (Portal) – The Israeli military bombed the capital of the southern Gaza Strip. It was the fiercest fighting since the ground invasion to destroy Hamas began five weeks ago, as the US renewed pressure on Israel to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties.
Israel reported that its forces, supported by warplanes, reached the heart of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday and also surrounded the town. Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters had been involved in violent clashes with Israelis.
“We are in the most intense day since the ground operation began,” the commander of the Israeli military’s Southern Command, General Yaron Finkelman, said in a statement.
The fighting was also the fiercest since the collapse of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas last week. Israeli forces also fought in Jabalia, a large urban refugee camp and Hamas stronghold in the north next to Gaza City, and in Shuja’iyya in the east, Finkelman said.
Hamas’ armed wing said it killed or wounded eight Israeli soldiers and destroyed 24 military vehicles on Tuesday. An Israeli military website listed two troop deaths for Tuesday and 83 since the ground operation began.
Gaza health officials said many civilians were killed in an Israeli attack on homes in Deir al-Balah, north of Khan Younis. Dr. Eyad Al-Jabri, head of Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital there, told Portal that at least 45 people were killed. Portal was unable to reach the area or confirm the toll.
Israel launched its campaign in response to an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants who hit Israeli cities, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israel.
Israeli police are investigating alleged sex crimes and Israel’s Justice Ministry said “victims were tortured, physically abused, raped, burned alive and dismembered.”
Hamas’ media office said on Tuesday that at least 16,248 people, including 7,112 children and 4,885 women, have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza since October 7. Thousands more are missing and are believed to be buried under rubble.
These figures were not immediately verified by the Gaza Strip Health Ministry.
US PRESSURE ON ISRAEL
Since the ceasefire collapsed, Israel has published an online map to tell Gazans which parts of the enclave need to be evacuated to avoid attacks. The eastern neighborhood of Khan Younis was marked on Monday and many of the hundreds of thousands of residents fled on foot.
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Gazans say there is nowhere safe to go as remaining towns and shelters are already overcrowded and Israel continues to bomb the areas it tells people to go to.
At Khan Younis’ main Nasser hospital, the wounded arrived in an ambulance, a car, a flatbed truck and a donkey cart after survivors described an attack on a school used as a shelter for displaced people.
In one ward, nearly every inch of blood-spattered floor space was taken up by wounded people, including small children, as paramedics rushed from patient to patient as relatives wailed.
Two girls were treated, still covered in dust from the collapse of the house that buried their family.
“My parents are under the rubble,” one child sobbed. “I want my mother, I want my mother, I want my family.”
Amid ongoing international criticism of the plight in the Gaza Strip, the United States, Israel’s close ally, reiterated on Tuesday that Israel must do more to allow fuel and other aid into Gaza and reduce harm to civilians. Despite the rising death toll, Israel has now appeared somewhat receptive to the calls.
“The level of incoming assistance is not sufficient,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a news conference. “It has to go up, and we have made that clear to the Israeli government.”
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday, citing survivors and witnesses, that Hamas repeatedly raped women and mutilated their bodies during its attack on southern Israel.
“It’s horrific,” he said at a political fundraiser in Boston.
In a statement on its Telegram channel, Hamas condemned Biden’s allegations as false and said he joined Israel’s efforts to cover up war crimes committed with US support.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited allegations of rape and other abuses at a meeting with families of returned hostages on Tuesday, which some participants said were angered by the government’s handling of the situation.
“I have heard stories that have broken my heart… I have heard, and you have also heard, about sexual assaults and cases of brutal rape that are unparalleled,” Netanyahu said at a news conference.
Israel says a number of women and children remain in the hands of Hamas. During the lull in fighting, Hamas returned more than 100 hostages, while 138 prisoners remain.
Biden last week blamed Iran-backed Hamas for the failure of the ceasefire, saying the militant group’s refusal to release the remaining young women violated that agreement.
Israel and Hamas accuse each other of failing the negotiations.
Asked late Tuesday whether Hamas was the only group holding U.S. hostages in Gaza, Biden said: “Well, there are others. Look, I’m not going to talk about this anymore. We won’t go away.”
Hamas official Osama Hamdan said Tuesday that no more hostages would be released until Israel’s aggression stops.
Separately, the US imposed visa bans on people involved in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank after calling on Israel to do more to prevent attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers.
Two Palestinian teenagers were killed by Israeli gunfire in Tubas in the West Bank, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Wednesday.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday condemned settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Reporting by Portal bureau; writing by Cynthia Osterman and Stephen Coates; Edited by Miral Fahmy
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.
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