This Thursday marks the second month of the war. Israeli army troops are advancing across the Gaza Strip and hundreds of thousands of residents are moving from one place to another in search of refuge. They are being hit by the most intense bombings and fighting since the conflict began, in what the UN calls “collective punishment” and an “apocalyptic” situation that encourages war crimes. The occupation forces are pressing the accelerator, especially in the south, where, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they have surrounded Yahia Sinwar’s house in the town of Khan Yunis in the last few hours. However, there is no evidence that the top political official of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is there, but he is one of the fighters Israel prefers to hunt in the conflict.
In that period since October 7, one of the most technologically advanced armies in the world has lost 83 of its men, killed more than 16,000 people and destroyed much of the Gaza area’s homes and infrastructure. nearly 365 square kilometers in size, but failed to capture or kill any of the top Hamas officials who led the attack that day that left 1,200 dead in Israel. “Yesterday (Tuesday) I said that our troops could reach any part of the Gaza Strip. Today they surround Sinwar’s house. “His house may not be his hideout and he may escape, but it is only a matter of time before we catch him,” Netanyahu said in a video message.
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Some of the 138 hostages remaining in the hands of the Islamists were also found in Khan Yunis, fifteen of them have already been confirmed dead. This remains one of the sensitive issues for the Israeli authorities. Some of the hundreds of those released along with their relatives during the ceasefire week confronted Netanyahu at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday. The meeting ended with loud shouting and some participants leaving before the event was over, local press reported. The President had just informed them that it was currently not possible to bring their relatives back.
Meanwhile, the center and south of the Gaza Strip are the scene of intense bombing and ground fighting, making it difficult for the population to reach safety or address the urgent humanitarian crisis. A neighbor who did not wish to be named and lives in Rafah, on the border with Egypt and just a few kilometers from Khan Yunis, shared with EL PAÍS images of displaced people improvising shelters on the streets and in parking lots using wooden slats, blankets and fabrics .
“They are pushing people to Egypt so that the migration process can begin soon,” he says, referring to the idea expressed by Israeli authorities in some areas of deporting Gaza residents to the neighboring country, which Cairo flatly rejects. “We hope it doesn’t happen, we don’t want it to happen,” adds the resident, who listens to the bombings of Khan Younis, especially at night, while people from this city continue to stream to Rafah further south. “The Israeli army is already in Khan Younis and we believe they will soon come to Rafah,” he fears.
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“Civilians collectively punished”
“Under these circumstances, there is a very high risk that international crimes will occur,” denounced the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk. The catalog of international crimes includes, among others, genocide, crimes against humanity, war and ethnic cleansing. “My humanitarian colleagues have described the situation as apocalyptic,” added Türk, who has been waiting for almost two months for permission from Israel to visit the area, both this country and Palestine. He called for “urgent measures” to prevent “these crimes,” stressing that “civilians continue to be relentlessly bombed and collectively punished by Israel.”
According to a spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, the number of dead who arrived at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el Balah in the last 24 hours was 73 and the number of injured was 123. Distributed along with the message Gaza authorities released images of dead and alive victims of all ages gathered on the floor of the hospital center.
“There are 700 people admitted to hospital and new patients are constantly being added. We are running out of vital supplies to treat them,” Marie-Aure Perreaut Revial, Médecins Sans Frontières emergency coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement on the social network X (formerly Twitter). Since the end of the armistice on December 1st, this center has received between 150 and 200 war wounded every day. “A shortage of medicines and fuel could result in the hospital being unable to carry out life-saving operations or intensive care. Without electricity, ventilators would stop working, blood donations would have to stop and sterilization of surgical instruments would be impossible,” added the NGO, whose team is based at Al-Aqsa Hospital. The Palestinian Red Crescent teams work there with the flashlights of their cell phones.
Deir el Balah, a city in the center of the Gaza Strip between Gaza City in the north and Khan Yunis in the south, has been one of the main targets of Israeli attacks in recent hours. Already on Tuesday afternoon, local reporters had shown the grisly images of a building shortly after a bomb attack, in which residents were picking up the wounded with blankets amid a flaming scene with many bodies in the rubble.
Out of a population of 2.3 million people, 1.2 million have found protection in 156 UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA) facilities. These are places that are overcrowded, as are other improvised emergency shelters where the population is trying to find accommodation. Overcrowding leads to an increase in infectious and respiratory diseases, scabies, diarrhea up to 40 to 50 times higher than normal and even a case of jaundice, warned Richard Peeperkorn of the World Health Organization. Health.
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