Israel urged Palestinians on Saturday “not to delay” the evacuation of northern Gaza and proposed a ground offensive after a week of war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented deadly attack that has already claimed thousands of lives.
• Also read: LIVE | Day 8 of the Israel-Hamas war
• Also read: Fear of attack in France: Louvre Museum closed “for security reasons”.
• Also read: Israel-Hamas war: fourth Canadian dies
Israel responded to this attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip with massive bombings of that area, from where Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israeli territory.
AFP journalists near the Israeli town of Sderot, near the Gaza Strip, saw Israeli air strikes on the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday afternoon, sending huge black smoke billowing into the sky.
The Hamas attack and the war it sparked sent an unprecedented shockwave across the region and beyond, stoking fears of a widening of the conflict and a humanitarian catastrophe for the population of the Gaza Strip, which is under a complete siege with no water or electricity Food has supplies.
Since the October 7 attack, at least 1,300 people, mostly civilians, including at least 130 foreigners or dual nationals, have been killed in Israel.
AFP
According to local authorities, more than 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including 724 children, have died in the Gaza Strip, a small, impoverished and besieged area between Israel and Egypt.
Israel also said it had identified at least 120 people, civilians, soldiers and foreigners, who were kidnapped during the attack by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
Hundreds of people are still missing and their bodies are still being identified.
Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh accused Israel of “war crimes” in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
The Palestinian movement, for its part, is regularly accused by Israel of using civilians as human shields, while the prospect of a ground offensive in the heart of a densely populated area appears frightening.
According to Hamas, which has threatened to execute civilians if it attacks civilians, 22 hostages have already died in Israeli bombings, but this number cannot be verified.
Israel announced the deaths of two Hamas military leaders: Mourad Abou Mourad, who the army said was “responsible for a large part of the deadly offensive” on October 7, and Ali Qadi, “who carried out the inhumane massacre and barbarity of civilians in Israel.” .
AFP
In anticipation of a ground offensive that Israel said it was preparing for, the army on Friday called on civilians in the Gaza Strip in the north of the territory – 1.1 million people out of a total population of 2.4 million – to evacuate to the south, and urged her on Saturday not to “delay.”
There is a “slot from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.,” she said. The army accused Hamas, which rejected the evacuation call, of trying to block departures.
Since Friday, thousands of residents have fled by any means possible, hastily piling up their belongings on trailers, carts, motorcycles, by car, through the ruins.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “immediate” humanitarian access to this small strip of land, which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2006.
American President Joe Biden has also made “the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza a priority.
Tensions are also high on Israel’s northern border, where the Israeli army announced on Saturday that it had killed “several terrorists” who tried to enter after attacking a target of the Shiite Hezbollah movement in the south of the country during the night Lebanon, had attacked in response to “infiltration” and aerial gunfire.
Hezbollah said it had attacked Israeli positions in a disputed border area, and two civilians were killed in an Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon, a local elected official said.
A Portal video journalist was killed and six other journalists from AFP, Portal and Al-Jazeera were injured in bombings in southern Lebanon on Friday.
The Israeli army said on Saturday it “very much regretted” the death and indicated it was “investigating” without explicitly admitting responsibility. The Lebanese army accused them on Saturday of being responsible for firing “a missile that targeted a civilian press van.”
In the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, at least 16 Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli forces during rallies in solidarity with the Gaza Strip.
At dawn on October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest period, hundreds of Hamas fighters entered Israel in vehicles and by air from Gaza.
They killed more than a thousand civilians and unleashed terror under rocket fire on a scale not seen since Israel’s founding in 1948.
According to authorities, around 270 people were killed at a music festival.
Heartbreaking funerals follow one another in Israel, like the one on Friday of a 52-year-old man, father of three daughters, who was shot dead in front of his family in an attacked kibbutz a week ago.
Several hundred people, including families of people kidnapped by Hamas, demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday in front of the Defense Ministry. Some shouted “Bibi in prison” or even “Bibi in exchange for our hostages” in reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Concern is growing for residents of the Gaza Strip, a 362 square kilometer area that has been subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since Hamas came to power there.
AFP
Egypt controls its only access to the world, the Rafah border crossing, which is currently closed.
Israel and Egypt gave the green light Saturday to allow Americans to leave the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing, according to a U.S. official.
On the Palestinian side of this border town, dozens of displaced Gaza families have taken over a United Nations school, piling up laundry, mattresses and packages in classrooms and on the playground, an AFP journalist noted.
Further north, thousands of displaced people crowd the courtyard of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younès.
“It’s a disaster, there’s nothing to eat, we don’t know where to sleep, we don’t know what to do or where to go,” complains Juma Nasser, a forty-year-old.
AFP
In front of the hospital, entire families sit on the ground and are left to fend for themselves, some crying, others showing frightened and shocked faces.
According to the United Nations, more than 423,000 Palestinians have already left their homes and 5,540 houses have been destroyed.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on Saturday for the war against Hamas to be waged with “the greatest respect” for the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
King Abdullah II of Jordan began a tour of Europe on Saturday “to mobilize an international position to end the war on Gaza.”
He has to travel to France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy.
Anger is also evident in public opinion in countries across the region, where thousands of people demonstrated on Friday, particularly in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Bahrain, in support of the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia, where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is continuing a regional tour, called for an “immediate ceasefire” after announcing it would halt talks on possible normalization with Israel.