The Israeli military said its forces had killed “dozens of terrorists” in Gaza in the past 24 hours. (document)
Palestinian territories:
Israel on Saturday stepped up its violent attacks on the Gaza Strip as concerns grew over an attack on Rafah. Rafah is a southern city crowded with civilians uprooted by nearly four months of war.
An AFP reporter said of the main city in southern Gaza, which has been the focus of Israel’s offensive, that a barrage of airstrikes and tank fire left Khan Younis shaken throughout the night and throughout the day.
The health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza said more than 100 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the Palestinian territory overnight. The Israeli army said its forces had killed “dozens of terrorists” in northern and central Gaza over the past 24 hours.
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s 2.4 million people displaced by fierce fighting have fled south to Rafah since the war began, filling streets and parks with their tents.
The United Nations says the city, which once had a population of 200,000, is now home to more than half of Gaza’s population.
Civilians fleeing to Rafah were pushed to the Egyptian border, trying to avoid parts of the city and avoid fighting in nearby Khan Younis.
AFP images showed Palestinians gathering around a row of body bags at Rafa Najjar hospital after the Israeli attack.
“The children were sleeping and suddenly there was a bombing. God took one of my children away and three children escaped death,” said Ahmed Bassam Gamal, who also lost his father.
Hamas remains defiant and is “holding its ground” in Khan Younis, an official of the Palestinian Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 said.
“The resistance movement in Khan Younis remains tenacious…it is inflicting losses on the occupying forces,” Mahmoud Mardawi said. “The enemy will not achieve anything by targeting Khan Younis.”
“The pressure cooker of despair”
The U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said it was deeply concerned about the escalation of hostilities in Khan Younis, which has led to increasing numbers of people fleeing to the south.
“Rafa is a pressure cooker of despair and we are worried about what will happen next,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant warned on Thursday that the military would set its sights on Rafah.
“We are completing our mission in Khan Younis and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate the terrorists who threaten us,” he said in a video message sent to reporters by the Defense Ministry.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Agents also held about 250 hostages, and Israel said 132 remained in Gaza, at least 27 of whom were believed to have been killed.
Israel, vowing to eliminate Hamas, launched a massive military offensive that killed at least 27,238 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
According to the Israeli military, Israel has lost 224 troops since ground operations in Gaza began in late October.
Fighting has devastated the narrow coastal strip, and the Israeli siege has led to severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine.
Blinken’s fifth trip
Image analysis by UNITAR based on footage collected on January 6 and 7 showed that “approximately 30 per cent” of buildings in Gaza have been affected by the war.
A surge in civilian deaths in Gaza and Israeli concerns about the fate of the hostages have intensified calls for a ceasefire.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East again in the coming days to push for a new proposal involving the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting, the State Department said.
Blinken will visit the proposal’s mediators Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia starting on Sunday, the report added.
The visit, his fifth since the start of the war, comes after Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majid Ansari said he hoped to hear “good news” about a renewed suspension of fighting “in the coming weeks”.
Ansari said the truce proposal discussed in Paris had been “approved by the Israeli side” and had received a “positive” initial response from Hamas.
But a source close to Hamas told AFP: “There has been no agreement on the framework of the agreement – all parties have important observations – and Qatar’s statement is hasty and untrue.”
“Add fuel to the fire”
Hamas sources said it had been presented with a plan that included an initial six-week pause in fighting to send more aid to Gaza and the exchange of some Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
Hamas’ office said leaders of Hamas and its Gaza ally Islamic Jihad, Qatar-based Ismail Haniyeh and Ziad al-Nahara separately discussed the latest developments and said any future ceasefire would It must lead to a “full withdrawal” of Israeli troops from Gaza. .
The war has triggered a surge in attacks by Iranian-backed pro-Palestinian groups in the region.
The U.S. military launched a wave of airstrikes overnight against Iranian forces and Tehran-backed militants in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for a drone strike in Jordan on Sunday that killed three U.S. soldiers.
Since the outbreak of the Gaza War, the US military and its allies in the Middle East have faced intensifying attacks, suffering more than 165 attacks since mid-October.
Hamas condemned the attack, saying the United States would “bear responsibility for the consequences of this barbaric aggression… which will only add fuel to the fire.”
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the Israeli military said its warplanes struck targets of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Follow us on Google news ,Twitter , and Join Whatsapp Group of thelocalreport.in
