GAZA STRIP, Palestine
Israeli forces pressed on with intensified attacks in the Gaza Strip's biggest southern city and a central refugee camp, after the territory's Hamas-run health ministry reported more than 21,000 people had been killed in 11 weeks of war.
The continued air strikes and
the expansion of operations in the south came as the WHO warned on Wednesday
that Gaza's population was in "grave peril", with France's president
calling for a long-term ceasefire.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel
Hagari said on Wednesday that strikes on a central refugee camp in Gaza had
entered a third day, and that an additional brigade had been deployed to the
southern city of Khan Yunis, the recent focus of heavy urban combat.
He also hinted at a possible
"expansion of fighting in the north" along the Lebanese border, which
has seen repeated exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah since
the offensive against Gaza broke out.
Following a visit to the
border earlier in the day, army chief Herzi Halevi said the military had
"approved plans for a variety of contingencies, and we need to be prepared
to strike if required".
Calls for an end to the
hostilities continued to mount on Wednesday, with French President Emmanuel
Macron emphasising in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
"the need to work towards a lasting ceasefire".
He also expressed his
"deepest concern at the very heavy civilian toll" in Gaza, his office
said in a statement, adding that France would be working with Jordan to carry
out humanitarian operations in the territory "in the coming days".
Since Israel imposed a siege
at the outset of the war, Gazans have faced severe shortages of food, water,
fuel, and medicine.
WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus echoed calls for a ceasefire on Wednesday.
He pressed the international
community to take "urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril facing the
population of Gaza and jeopardising the ability of humanitarian workers to help
people with terrible injuries, acute hunger, and at severe risk of disease".
In the same statement, the WHO
said its staff had reported that "hungry people again stopped our convoys
today in the hope of finding food".
An estimated 1.9 million
Gazans have been displaced, the UN says.
One of them, Iman al-Masry,
recently gave birth to quadruplets in a hospital in southern Gaza after fleeing
her family's home in the territory's devastated north early in the war.
The journey "affected my
pregnancy", the 28-year-old said on Wednesday, and she gave birth by
C-section on December 18 to two girls and two boys.
She was quickly asked to leave
the hospital to make room for other patients, but had to leave behind one son
who was too fragile to go with them.
"They are very
slim," she said of the infants from a cramped schoolroom turned shelter in
Deir al-Balah.
"Because of the lack
of... baby formula, I try to breastfeed them, but there's no nutritious food I
can eat to breastfeed the three babies," she added.
Not far away, at the
Al-Maghazi refugee camp, a UN-run school doubling as a shelter was hit by
shelling in the night.
"They tell you there are
green zones and other zones with other colours. All those are rumours, there
are no safe zones in Gaza," one man told AFP on Wednesday, without giving
his name.
The war has raised fears of a
broader regional conflict, with the deadly cross-border exchanges between
Israel and Hezbollah, as well as recent attacks on shipping by Huthi rebels in
Yemen acting in solidarity with Hamas. All three groups are backed by Iran.
Israel wants Hezbollah – which
says it is acting in support of Hamas – to withdraw further away from the
border, and has threatened to achieve that goal by overwhelming force, if
necessary.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps warned Israel on Wednesday that it or its allies would take
"direct action" to avenge the killing of senior commander Razi
Moussavi, who died Monday in a missile strike in Syria blamed on Israel, the
local Mehr news agency reported.
Meanwhile, a drone crashed
near a village in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, the Israeli army said
today, with an Iraqi faction close to Hamas claiming responsibility for an
attack in the area.
Violence has also flared
across the occupied West Bank, with more than 310 Palestinians killed by
Israeli troops or settlers since October 7, the health ministry there said.
An Israeli operation in a
refugee camp in the northern West Bank killed six people Wednesday, the
ministry said. The army said it had struck the Nur Shams camp from the air.
The army's operations
continued overnight into Thursday, notably in Jenin and Ramallah, according to
the official news agency Wafa.
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