According to Palestinian sources quoted by local media, about 50 people, including many children, were killed and many more injured in new air strikes by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip tonight. At least 27 people were killed in two attacks on residential buildings in the southern city of Rafah, the Wafa news agency reported. Another 18 people were killed in a bomb attack in the Al Zawaida area and seven in the Al Zaytoun district. Another raid in the northern part of the Gaza Strip left three people dead, including a six-year-old boy. According to Wafa, an increase in the number of victims is expected, and several people are still trapped in the rubble of the bombed buildings.
“Hamas terrorists are modern Nazis. The only solution Hamas wants is the final solution, the extermination of the Jews.” This was said by Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan at the emergency meeting of the Security Council. “The brutality of the cruel Nazis of Hamas is not the only similarity to the Nazis” during World War II. “Hamas wants to exterminate the Jews like the Nazis,” he added: “Like when National Socialism came to power.” The world is silent.
“Gaza is hell on earth. For the United Nations today, saving humanity from hell means saving the Palestinians in Gaza. Virtually all of our people in the Gaza Strip are homeless, displaced and have no safety anywhere,” said Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour in his speech at the emergency meeting of the Security Council. “How many more days will you wait to say enough?” “To realize that it’s a war against our children while you’re still paralyzed?” he asked. “The General Assembly has called for a humanitarian ceasefire and this must happen immediately,” he added, accusing the CDS of failing to act.
“We pay for your failure. Free us, free everyone, now, now!” One of the three female hostages, of whom Hamas released a video today that shocked Israel and the world, screams anger against Benjamin Netanyahu. Words that come from the bottom of an unknown hiding place in the Strip. “Cruel psychological propaganda from Hamas,” the prime minister denounced shortly afterwards and ruled out a ceasefire.
The militiamen’s move came as the Israeli army advanced from the beachhead in the north of the Gaza Strip with troops and tanks to the outskirts of Gaza City. A number of men and vehicles drove to the eastern part of Sajaya district, a stone’s throw from the Palestinian enclave’s capital, according to local sources. And before retreating, they hit Sallah-a-din, the main artery that cuts through the entire strip. A slow and inexorable attrition of Hamas’ positions, as military spokesman Daniel Hagari explained: “We have expanded our activities in the Gaza Strip and strengthened the forces involved.” A maneuver that Netanyahu described as the “third phase of the war” in which the army ” “moved forward moderately but forcefully.” Because, Netanyahu emphasized, “the ground operation” is the only way to bring the hostages home.
A belief reinforced by the rescue of soldier Ori Magidish, one of the 239 hostages kidnapped on October 7 at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where she served as a lookout. A “targeted” operation was prepared for days after intelligence received information about his detention location in Gaza. However, the success achieved does not seem to be able to compensate for the shock of the video of the three hostages, which Israeli television reported on but did not broadcast. The identities of the three women were revealed by the Prime Minister himself: Yelena Tropanov (from Kibbutz Nir Oz), Danielle Alloni and Rimon Kirscht (from Kibbutz Nirim), who witnessed their relatives killed or kidnapped in the attack three weeks ago . “We are paying for your political, security and military failures. There was no army,” Alloni shouted, “there was no one, no one protected us. Now we’re prisoners here… assuming there are no conditions.” “You’re killing us. Do it.” Do you want to kill us all? Do you want the army to kill us? Isn’t it enough that Israeli citizens were killed? Free your citizens and prisoners now. Free us: now, now, now!” demanded the woman, asking them to accept the prisoner exchange proposed by Hamas.
An accusation to which the Prime Minister apparently did not respond, but made it clear in a press conference in Tel Aviv that there would be no exchange and no ceasefire. “There is a time for peace and a time for war. Now it’s time for war. We didn’t want him, but we will lead him to victory,” thundered Netanyahu, rejecting any hypothesis of resignation. “The only one I want to resign from,” he said in response to a question from journalists, “is Hamas. We will force them to resign and give up their goals. This is my responsibility and I will continue to “lead my country to war.”
Instead, the families of the three hostages responded to the video with an appeal to Western leaders. “I ask President Biden,” one of them said, “to do everything I can to bring them home. Time passes, but it is not late to bring them back.”
The army spokesman explained that the military strategy on site remains that of a “combined land-sea-air operation”. With attacks increasing exponentially in recent days, hitting over 650 targets in Gaza: weapons depots, anti-tank missile launch sites (including near Al-Azhar University), underground hideouts and Hamas training camp bases. Instead, police announced that they had identified the bodies of 1,135 Israelis killed: 823 civilians and 312 soldiers. Among them was the Israeli with a German passport, Shani Louk, 22, who was kidnapped and massacred at a rave in Reim, as some videos show.
The situation in the Gaza Strip is collapsing and the humanitarian aid arriving here is certainly not enough. Today, 40 trucks entered the Rafah border crossing, but in the evening the White House announced that the goal was to allow at least a hundred trucks to pass per day. The death toll (the Hamas authorities do not distinguish between civilians and fighters) is 8,306, of which 3,457 are “minors.” The number of injured is over 21,000.
Read the full article on ANSA.it