GAZA STRIP, Palestine
Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza reported on Monday more than 24,000 deaths in the war with Israel which has rocked the region, and militants released a video announcing the death of two Israeli hostages.
Deadly violence in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank, exchanges of fire over Israel’s border with
Lebanon, and strikes by United States forces and Iran-backed Yemeni rebels in
the Red Sea, have all raised fears of an escalation beyond the Gaza Strip.
The war, sparked by
unprecedented Hamas attacks on Israel, has created a humanitarian catastrophe
for the 2.4 million people in the besieged strip, the United Nations and aid
groups warn, and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
The health ministry in Gaza,
ruled by Hamas since 2007, reported more than 60 “martyrs” overnight, in what
the group’s media office described as “intense” Israeli bombardment.
The Hamas government media
office said two hospitals, a girls’ school and “dozens” of homes were hit.
In a statement released with
the video, Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades blamed “the
Zionist army’s bombing” for the death of two male hostages.
The video showed a woman
hostage, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held captive
with had been killed in captivity.
Hospitals in Gaza have been
hit repeatedly since the war erupted, and the World Health Organization (WHO)
says most of them are no longer functioning.
The Israeli military accuses
Hamas militants of operating out of civilian facilities or from tunnels under
them, a charge the Islamist group denies.
AFPTV footage showed smoke billowing over Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, as explosions could be heard from nearby Rafah, on the territory’s southern border with Egypt.
Israel’s army said it had
struck “two terrorists loading weapons into a vehicle” in Khan Yunis, raided “a
Hamas command center” there and seized weapons.
In central Israel, which has
been largely spared the current violence, a suspected car ramming attack on
Monday killed one woman and injured 17 other people, medics said, and police
arrested two Palestinian suspects.
Hamas’s unprecedented October
7 attack that triggered the war resulted in about 1,140 deaths in Israel,
mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also seized
about 250 hostages, 132 of whom Israel says remain in Gaza, including at least
25 believed to have been killed.
Vowing to destroy Hamas,
Israel launched a relentless military campaign that has killed at least 24,100
people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health
ministry.
The UN says more than three
months of fighting have displaced roughly 85 percent of Gaza’s population,
crowded into shelters and struggling to get food, water, fuel and medical care.
As temperatures plunge,
families living in makeshift tents in Rafah have resorted to burning plastic to
ward off the chill, despite the noxious fumes.
“At night, I feel like we’re going to die from the cold,” said Haneen Adwan,
31, a mother of six children who was forced to flee from central Gaza’s
Nuseirat refugee camp.
United Nations Secretary
General Antonio Guterres again called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, “to
ensure sufficient aid gets to where it is needed. To facilitate the release of
the hostages. To tamp down the flames of wider war,” he said.
Echoing earlier warnings of a
fast-approaching famine, UN agencies earlier called on Israel to allow access
to its Ashdod port, north of Gaza, for critical aid deliveries.
They sought “a fundamental
step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” arguing current levels
are far below what is needed.
On Sunday, thousands of
Palestinians swamped two aid trucks delivering flour and tinned food to
warehouses in Gaza City, an AFP correspondent said.
“We are only eating rice, but
rice is not enough for a human being,” said 53-year-old Omar Al-Shandogi.
Israel has faced international
pressure over surging civilian casualties in Gaza, with King Abdullah II of
neighboring Jordan warning on Monday that continuing Israeli attacks could
cause the conflict to expand across the region.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is under intense domestic pressure to return the hostages
and account for political and security failings surrounding the October 7
attacks.
Hagit Chen said it was “hard
to live, to sleep, to breathe, to eat” because she has heard nothing from her
son Itay, 19, since Hamas took him captive on October 7.
“The hostages have no time.
Everyone is ill and injured,” she said in Berlin, where hostage relatives met
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday.
Violence involving regional
allies of Iran-backed Hamas — considered a “terrorist” group by the United
States and the European Union — has surged since the war began.
Attacks by Yemen’s Houthi
rebels, who say they act in solidarity with Gaza, have disrupted shipping in
the vital Red Sea maritime trade route, triggering strikes on scores of rebel
targets last Friday by US and British forces.
A missile struck a US-owned
cargo ship off Yemen on Monday, a British security agency and maritime risk
company said, a day after the Houthis fired a cruise missile at an American
destroyer. US warplanes shot that missile down.
Since October, violence has
also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where three Palestinians were
killed Monday in separate clashes with the Israeli army, the Palestinian health
ministry said.
International efforts to avoid
escalation will see Australia’s top diplomat Penny Wong in the region this week
to support “diplomatic efforts toward a durable peace in the Middle East,” her
office said.
In Turkiye, a staunch
supporter of the Palestinian cause, authorities have accused Israeli footballer
Sagiv Jehezkel of “incitement to hate and hostility” over a goal celebration.
Jehezkel, who left the country
on Monday after being sacked by his Turkish team, showed a message written on a
wrist bandage, which read “100 days. 07/10” along with a Star of David.
In a testimony to the police,
Jehezkel said he wanted to call attention to the hostages taken by Hamas.
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