New bombings targeted the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, where Israel announced it would further step up its offensive against Hamas, despite international calls to silence the guns and cause heavy civilian casualties in the besieged Palestinian territories.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu estimated that peace could only be achieved if Gaza was “demilitarized” and “deradicalized” more than two and a half months after the start of the war, which was triggered by a bloody attack on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil.
In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy Hamas, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007. The war, which shows no signs of easing, has caused immense destruction and a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, where famine is looming and most hospitals are out of service.
On Tuesday, according to AFP images, thick clouds of smoke billowed into the sky over Gaza following attacks, particularly over Khan Younes, the large southern city where Israel had announced it would now focus most of its offensive against Hamas.
According to an AFP correspondent, Israeli night raids also targeted the neighboring town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where tens of thousands of displaced people are crammed into makeshift camps.
Thirty bodies of victims of the bombings were transported to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes in the last 24 hours, the Hamas Health Ministry said.
The toll continues to rise
According to a recent report from this ministry on Tuesday, 20,915 people, mostly women, teenagers and children, were killed in Israeli military operations in Gaza, including 241 in the last 24 hours.
In Israel, the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza left about 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the latest official Israeli figures. According to Israel, around 250 people have been kidnapped, 129 of whom remain held in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the army said it had struck more than a hundred Hamas targets in the past day. She published images of her soldiers, accompanied by tanks, advancing on foot between the dusty ruins as shots rang out.
Hamas released footage showing militants opening fire and blowing up an Israeli tank.
AFP images filmed in Tal al-Hawa, a devastated, nearly deserted neighborhood of Gaza City, show piles of rubble and blackened ruins, as well as the destroyed rooms of Al-Quds Hospital, which was besieged by the army in November.
“By God, the destruction is very great and all the residents will be driven south. May God help people overcome the misfortunes that befall them,” says a man.
“We are not stopping, (…) we are intensifying the fighting in the coming days,” said Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after a visit to Gaza.
“Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized and Palestinian society must be de-radicalized,” he told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
According to the army, 158 soldiers have been killed in combat since the ground offensive in Gaza began on October 27.
In this small, overpopulated area, which has been under a total Israeli siege since October 9, the war has forced 1.9 million people to flee their homes, representing 85% of the population, according to the United Nations.
Israel “claims that there are safe inhabited areas or safe areas, but this attack contradicts its claims and its lies,” a survivor, Abu Baraa, said Tuesday in the ruins of a bomb-damaged house in Rafah.
The Rafah refugee camps “accommodate tens of thousands of peaceful citizens, so there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip,” he added.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which visited the hospital in Deir el-Balah (center) after an attack on a nearby refugee camp, heard “heartbreaking stories” of entire families killed, its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, at least 70 people were killed in this Sunday attack on the al-Maghazi camp. The military said it was “investigating the incident.”
The flow of humanitarian aid has not increased significantly, despite the UN Security Council passing a resolution on Friday calling for “immediate” and “large-scale” delivery.
Demands a ceasefire
Humanitarian efforts “do not come close to meeting the needs of the people of Gaza,” Tedros said Tuesday. “We continue to call for an immediate ceasefire.”
Pressure continues to be exerted in Israel for the release of the hostages. On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu was heckled in parliament by families chanting “Now, now!” “What if it was your son?”, “80 days, every minute is hell,” read banners.
Hamas, considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union, has called for an end to the fighting before new negotiations over the release of hostages.
At the end of November, a week-long ceasefire allowed the release of 105 hostages against 240 Palestinian prisoners and the entry of large aid convoys from Egypt into Gaza.
Beyond Gaza, the specter of a widening conflict still looms, with exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel on the Israel-Lebanese border, violence in the occupied West Bank and attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on ships in the Red and Arabian Seas.
Attacks on American troops attributed to pro-Iranian groups have increased in Iraq and Syria.
On Tuesday, the United States announced that it had carried out strikes against three sites in Iraq used by pro-Iranian groups. According to the Iraqi government, a member of the security forces was killed.
On Monday, Iran accused Israel of killing one of its top officers in a rocket attack in Syria. The Revolutionary Guards identified this Brigadier General Razi Moussavi as the “logistical manager of the axis of resistance” against Israel, which includes in particular Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), three pro-Iranian fighters were also killed in the attack.
“This assassination is a blatant attack that goes beyond borders,” Hezbollah responded. The Israeli army declined to comment.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi warned that Israel would “certainly pay for this crime.”