Israel said it was stepping up its “encroachment” on the northern city of Gaza in the Palestinian territory, where its soldiers continued their advance on Wednesday to destroy Hamas militants, with no hope of respite for the trapped Palestinian civilians.
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In retaliation for the bloody attack carried out on its soil on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas.
After a month of war, the soldiers are now “in the heart” of Gaza City, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday evening.
“Gaza is the largest terrorist base ever built,” he said, adding that soldiers were “taking their grip” on Gaza City, the most densely populated part of the territory where Israel says Hamas’s “center” is entrenched strengthen”. in a tunnel network.
Israeli soldiers are advancing “with a single target: Hamas’s infrastructure, its commanders, its bunkers, its communications centers,” Mr. Gallant added.
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Images released by the Israeli army on Wednesday show tanks and bulldozers advancing through the smoking ruins of the Gaza Strip. Soldiers enter the destroyed buildings as explosions erupt from the ground.
In Gaza City, where entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, dozens of residents carrying white flags are fleeing south on foot in the hope of escaping the bombs.
The bodies of Palestinians killed in the attacks were transported to hospitals, some loaded on donkey carts and others on bulldozers, according to witnesses.
Israel is refusing any humanitarian ceasefire until the more than 240 hostages held by Hamas are released, despite urgent calls from the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations and foreign capitals for a ceasefire or pause that would allow emergency assistance to be provided to populations without water , electricity, food and medicine.
On the Israeli side, at least 1,400 people have died since the start of the war, according to authorities, most of them civilians killed on the day of the attack by Hamas commandos of unprecedented violence and scale since the founding of Israel in 1948.
Israeli bombings killed 10,569 people, mostly civilians, including 4,324 children, on the Palestinian side in the Gaza Strip, according to a report released by the Hamas Health Ministry on Wednesday.
The war has caused immense destruction in the small area where, according to the UN, 1.5 million people have left their homes.
“Cemeteries full”
Hamas’ communications service said on Telegram on Tuesday evening that several cemeteries “are full and there is no more space for burials.”
“Our incessant calls for an immediate ceasefire have remained unanswered,” lamented Médecins Sans Frontières, which announced the death of one of its staff in a bomb attack on the refugee camp in Chati, on the outskirts of Gaza City.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday that one of its humanitarian aid convoys to the Palestinian Red Crescent Al-Quds Hospital was hit by fire. The committee did not name the source.
The idea of a ceasefire is rejected by the United States, Israel’s close ally, which instead favors “humanitarian pauses.”
G7 foreign ministers expressed support for “humanitarian breaks and corridors” in Gaza when they met in Tokyo on Wednesday.
“Save us”
Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been trapped under incessant bombardment across its 362 square kilometers of territory and have suffered a total siege by Israel since October 9, which has cut off supplies of water, electricity and food.
“Stop this machine of destruction. Save us,” pleaded Tuesday Hicham Koulab, a displaced Palestinian implicated in the bombings in Rafah, in the southern territory of the territory.
The poverty-stricken area had already been subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since Hamas came to power in 2007.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) in the north, “on Tuesday, scores of people desperate for food stormed the last three bakeries that still had stocks of wheat flour,” counting 650 humanitarian aid trucks, who have been entering the Gaza Strip via Egypt since October 21st.
In the south, you have to wait “on average four to six hours to get half of a normal portion of bread,” said Ocha. Accordingly, around 600 people, holders of foreign passports and 17 injured people were evacuated to Egypt via the Rafah border post on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Ukraine announced that 43 of its nationals, as well as 36 Moldovan citizens, had been evacuated. Further evacuations are expected on Wednesday.
In the virtually divided Gaza Strip, the Israeli army is increasingly calling on civilians to leave the north, where fighting is most intense, and seek refuge in the south, where hundreds of thousands of people are crowded together.
No cast”
While Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 after 38 years of occupation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that his country would assume “overall responsibility for security” in the territory after the war “indefinitely” to prevent Hamas from returning to power The United States, the European Union and Israel have classified it as a terrorist organization.
“It will not be an occupation,” Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer stressed on Tuesday.
To achieve “sustainable peace and security” in the region, the United States is convinced that it is necessary to prohibit “the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza” and prevent this territory from being used “as a platform for terrorism and at the same time avoid “re-occupation”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated in Tokyo that it was the end of the conflict.
As the international community fears an expansion of the conflict, Mr Netanyahu warned on Tuesday that Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, would make “the mistake of its life” if it jumped straight into war.
There are daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
The G7 called on Iran on Wednesday not to support Hamas and Hezbollah and not to take any action that could “destabilize the Middle East.”
Violence is also increasing in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers since October 7, according to the Palestinian Authority.