RAFAH, Gaza Strip
Palestinian militants battled Israeli forces in devastated northern Gaza and launched a barrage of rockets from farther south Tuesday in a show of force more than 100 days into Israel’s massive air and ground campaign against the tiny coastal enclave.
The fighting in the north,
which was the first target of Israel’s offensive and where entire neighborhoods have been pulverized, showed how far
Israel is from achieving its goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of
hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.
In other developments, France
and Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation that helped mediate a previous cease-fire, said late Tuesday
that they had brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas to deliver medicine to
Israeli hostages in Gaza, as well as additional aid to Palestinians in the
besieged territory.
France said it had been
working since October on the deal, which will provide three months’ worth of
medication for 45 hostages with chronic illnesses, as well as other medicines
and vitamins. The medicines are expected to enter Gaza from Egypt on Wednesday.
It was the first known
agreement between the warring sides since a weeklong truce in November.
Meanwhile,
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is worsening, with 85% of the territory’s 2.3
million Palestinians having fled their homes and United Nations agencies warning of mass starvation and disease. The conflict
threatens to widen after the United States and Israel traded strikes with Iranian-backed groups across the region.
Israel has vowed to crush
Hamas’ military and governing capabilities to ensure that the Oct. 7 attack is
never repeated. Militants stormed into Israel from Gaza that day, killing some
1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage. With strong diplomatic and
military support from the United States, Israel has resisted international
calls for a cease-fire.
Nearly half of the hostages
were released during the truce, but more than 100 remain in captivity. Hamas has said it will not release any
others until Israel ends the war.
The longer the war goes on,
the more it threatens to ignite other fronts across the region.
Iran fired missiles late
Monday at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale
neighborhood near the sprawling U.S. Consulate in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s
northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Iraq and the U.S. condemned the
strikes, which killed several civilians, and Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Iran in protest.
Iranian-backed groups in Iraq
and Syria have carried out dozens of attacks on bases housing U.S. forces, and
a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad killed an Iranian-backed militia leader in early
January.
Elsewhere, Iranian-backed
Houthi rebels in Yemen have resumed their attacks on container ships in the Red
Sea following a wave of U.S.-led strikes last week. The U.S. military carried out another strike Tuesday. Separately, it said two
Navy SEALS are missing after a raid last week on a ship carrying Iranian-made
missile parts and weapons bound for Yemen.
Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah
militant group have exchanged fire along the border nearly every day since the
war in Gaza began. The strikes and counterstrikes have grown more severe since an Israeli strike killed
Hamas’ deputy political leader in Beirut this month, raising fears of a repeat
of the 2006 war.
No comments:
Post a Comment