TEL AVIV, Israel
Israel’s Army Chief, Herzi Halevi, has said the war in Gaza will last “many more months” as the military stepped up strikes inside the Gaza Strip, where more than 20,000 people have already been reported killed.
Concerns over a
spiralling humanitarian crisis inside the besieged territory have
amplified calls for an end to the hostilities, while incidents linked to
Iran-backed groups acting in solidarity with Palestine have fanned fears of a
wider regional conflict.
Yesterday, the United States
reported shooting down a barrage of drones and missiles over the Red Sea fired
by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
But Israel’s leaders have
repeatedly vowed to keep up their offensive until Hamas is destroyed, and army
chief signalled there would be no quick end to the war.
“This war’s objectives are
essential and not simple to achieve,” Halevi said last night.
“Therefore, the war will
continue for many more months.”
The conflict erupted when
Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October and killed about 1,140 people, mostly
civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
During the attack – the
deadliest in Israel’s history – Hamas also took around 250 hostages, of whom
129 remain inside Gaza, Israel says.
Israel retaliated with a
relentless bombardment and a siege followed by a ground invasion. The campaign
has killed at least 20,915 people, mostly women and children, according to the
latest toll issued by Gaza’s health ministry.
Since the siege went into effect, Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been suffering severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine, with only limited aid entering the territory. An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN.
In the southern city of Rafah,
where many displaced people have sought refuge, hundreds turned up at the Abdul
Salam Yassin water company yesterday carrying baskets, pulling handcarts and
even pushing a wheelchair stacked with bottles to queue for clean water.
“This was my father’s cart,”
said Rafah resident Amir al-Zahhar. “He was martyred during the war. He used it
to transport and sell fish, and now we are using it to transport fresh water.”
Elsewhere in the city, people
split logs and stacked kindling as the lack of fuel forced them to burn wood
for cooking and to keep warm.
One woman took advantage of
the sunshine yesterday to wash her family’s clothes by hand, telling AFP: “I’ve
pleaded with people for water. I have absolutely nothing. I’ve borrowed
everything, even the blankets, from others.”
The UN Security Council, in a
resolution last week, called for the “safe and unhindered delivery of
humanitarian assistance at scale”.
It requested the appointment
of a UN humanitarian coordinator to oversee and verify third-country aid to
Gaza, and yesterday Sigrid Kaag, the outgoing Dutch finance minister, was named
to the post.
The resolution, which did not
call for an immediate end to the fighting, effectively leaves Israel with
operational oversight of aid deliveries.
Israel returned the bodies of
80 Palestinians killed in Gaza after taking them from morgues and graves to
check there were no hostages among them, sources in the territory’s health
ministry said.
The bodies, which had been
transported to Israel, were returned through the Red Cross to Hamas authorities
who buried them in a mass grave in Gaza, the sources said.
An AFP photographer saw a
digger lowering the blue body bags into a trench in Rafah, in the far south of
the territory.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel
Hagari said yesterday that troops were “fighting in the southern Gaza Strip in
the area of Khan Yunis, and we have expanded the combat to the area known as
the central camps”.
Three more Israeli soldiers
were killed in Gaza yesterday, bringing the total to 161 since its ground
invasion began on 27 October, the military said.
The UN Human Rights Office
said it was “gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza
by Israeli forces”, particularly after the military ordered residents to move
to the central and southern regions.
France, a staunch Israeli
ally, also said it was concerned by Israel’s vow to intensify and prolong the
fighting.
Violence has also flared
across the occupied West Bank since the war began.
An Israeli operation in a
refugee camp in the north of the West Bank left six people dead early this
morning, according to the Palestinian ministry of health.
More than 300 Palestinians in
the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the war
erupted, according to the ministry.
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