Jerusalem — Fighting in Gaza raged for a 24th day on Monday after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing at least 1 400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
Since the October 7 attack, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says more than 8 000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s relentless retaliatory bombardments, half of them children.
Here are four key developments from the past 24 hours:
‘Heavy fighting’
The Israeli military said its forces killed “dozens” of militants in overnight clashes inside Gaza, as it stepped up what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “new stage” in the war, which he warned would be “long and difficult”.
Hamas also said its fighters were engaged in “heavy fighting” with Israeli forces in northern Gaza.
The army said “troops killed dozens of terrorists who barricaded themselves in buildings and tunnels and attempted to attack the troops” and that a fighter jet had targeted a building” with over 20 Hamas terrorist operatives inside”.
Bombing around hospitals
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society on Sunday said Israel was repeatedly bombing around Al-Quds hospital in central Gaza, causing damage and putting civilians at risk. Aside from the patients, some 14 000 people displaced by the war are sheltering there, it said.
The UN said there had also been weekend shelling near Gaza City’s Shifa hospital and the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, and that all 10 hospitals operating there had been told to evacuate by Israel in recent days.
The World Health Organization chief said calls to evacuate Al-Quds hospital were “deeply concerning”.
“It’s impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
33 more aid trucks
Another 33 trucks carrying water, food and medical supplies entered Gaza on Sunday through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, the United Nations humanitarian organisation OCHA said.
“This is the largest delivery of humanitarian aid since 21 October, when limited deliveries resumed,” it said, stressing that much more was needed.
It called in particular for deliveries of fuel, which have been completely blocked, to operate medical equipment and water and sanitation facilities.
So far, a total of 117 trucks have entered Gaza since limited deliveries resumed to the impoverished Palestinian territory, which is facing a near-total siege. Before the war, an average of 500 trucks a day would enter, UN figures show.
Strikes in Syria, Lebanon
Israel’s military said Monday it also hit military infrastructure inside Syria in response to rockets launched from there, as fears grow over the regional fallout from the Gaza war.
That followed further escalations along the Israel-Lebanon border, with Iran-backed Hezbollah claiming it had downed an Israeli drone and saying Israel had killed one of its fighters.
Hamas militants in Lebanon said they had launched rockets at Israel, with Israel saying it had returned fire and staged retaliatory air strikes.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pixabay
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