2024-02-25 01:01:50
This content was published on February 25, 2024 – 03:07
(Keystone-ATS) The Israeli army continued to bombard the Gaza Strip on Saturday. Fears of famine are growing in the enclave due to the lack of vital humanitarian aid for the Palestinian population after more than four months of war between Israel and Hamas.
The humanitarian situation continues to worsen in the besieged territory where 2.2 million people, the vast majority of the population, are threatened with “mass famine” due to lack of sufficient supplies of water and food, according to the UN.
Humanitarian aid, entry through the Rafah crossing in the far south of Gaza is subject to Israel’s green light, is still insufficient and its delivery to the north is difficult due to destruction and fighting.
The Hamas health ministry said Saturday that a two-month-old child, Mahmoud Fatouh, died of malnutrition at al-Chifa hospital in Gaza City.
On Friday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk denounced the “blockade and siege imposed on Gaza” by Israel which could “represent the use of famine as a method of warfare” which is, a- he recalled, a “war crime”.
Concern in Rafah
Concern is also growing in Rafah, on the closed border with Egypt, where at least 1.4 million people, most of them displaced, are massed in precarious conditions and are threatened with a large-scale land military operation. wanted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Before dawn, Israeli bombings cost the lives of at least 103 Palestinians, said the Hamas Health Ministry, which reports around a hundred deaths daily in Gaza in what is the largest offensive in Gaza. the history of Israel.
During the attack, some 250 people were also kidnapped and taken to Gaza. According to Israel, 130 hostages – 30 of whom are believed to have died – are still being held there after the release of around a hundred during a truce at the end of November, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
70 strikes in the last 24 hours
Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007 and which it considers, like the United States and the European Union, to be a terrorist organization.
After carrying out a campaign of bombardments by land, sea and air against the cramped territory, the Israeli army launched a ground offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip on October 27. Military operations against the urban guerrillas led by Hamas are now concentrated in Khan Younes, in the south.
The army announced on Saturday that its soldiers had eliminated “dozens of terrorists”, seized weapons and destroyed a tunnel opening in Khan Younes, transformed into a field of ruins. The Hamas government reported “more than 70 strikes in the last 24 hours” in Deir al-Balah (north), Khan Younes, Rafah, Gaza City and Jabaliya.
The head of Mossad in Paris
Determined to continue the war until the elimination of Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu presented to his cabinet on Thursday a “post-war” plan, which provides for the maintenance of Israel’s “security control” over the territory that this country had held from 1967 to 2005.
This plan was rejected by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. It sparked criticism from the United States, Israel’s main ally, including the head of diplomacy, Antony Blinken. , reaffirmed his country’s opposition to any “Israeli reoccupation” of Gaza.
The head of Mossad, the Israeli secret service, David Barnea, arrived in the French capital on Friday at the head of a delegation. At the end of January, he met his American and Egyptian counterparts and the Prime Minister of Qatar, the main mediators in the conflict.
According to a Hamas source, the plan then provided for a six-week break and the release of 200 to 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages.
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