2023-12-24 05:01:00
Five Hamas hostages died this Saturday due to bombing by the Israeli Army in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement from the Islamist group, while the arrival of more humanitarian aid and protection of civilians is expected after the resolution approved on Friday by the UN Security Council.
“As a result of a barbaric Zionist bombing, contact was lost with a responsible group of five prisoners,” Abu Ubeidade, spokesman for the Ezzeldin al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said in a statement. “We assume that the hostages died in one of these Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip,” the organization added in its message, in which it identified three of the hostages by name: Haim Perry, Yoram Metzger and Amiram Cooper, among 80 and 84 years old, who appeared alive in a video released by Hamas earlier in the week.
“You have to free us from here, no matter the cost. We do not want to be victims as a direct result of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) military airstrikes,” implored one of the elders in the footage, in which the three were sitting next to each other looking directly at the camera, with shaved heads, long beards and wearing white t-shirts. “We are the generation that laid the foundation for the creation of Israel. We do not understand why they abandoned us,” he added.
The escalation of the battle
Meanwhile, the Israeli Army carried out a series of airstrikes on the Al Bureij refugee camp, located in the center of the Strip, and on the Jabalia refugee camp, in the north, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. . Among the dead in Al Bureij is a girl, while in Jabalia dozens of civilians died due to the attack on a home. “We have been waging fierce armed clashes since Friday with enemy forces that penetrated the Jabalia area, using anti-tank rocket launchers, anti-personnel bombs, thereby killing and wounding a large number of Zionist soldiers,” the Islamist group said in a statement. a statement.
The eastern regions of Deir al Balah and the Nuseirat refugee camp suffered artillery attacks, killing and wounding dozens of civilians. In Khan Younis, a Hamas stronghold in the south of the Palestinian territory, there were airstrikes as tanks continued to lay siege to the city, preventing ambulances from reaching the wounded and making it difficult to recover the bodies. The Gaza Civil Defense reported in a statement the recovery of dozens of decomposing bodies from the streets of the city of Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, after the withdrawal of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles. “Most of the bodies recovered were subjected to executions and were mutilated by stray dogs,” Wafa said.
The Israeli Army and the country’s internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, indicated in a joint statement that 200 militants from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were detained this last week in Gaza and transferred to Israeli territory. Some of them surrendered voluntarily and were taken to interrogation camps, they said. According to Army estimates, more than 700 militiamen were captured and taken to Israel since the beginning of the war.
On the other hand, the Israeli Armed Forces reported in a letter that they killed the person in charge of Hamas for the supply, smuggling and manufacturing of weapons for the Ezzeldin al Qassam Brigades, Hasan al Atrash, in an air attack in Rafah, located in the extreme south. of the enclave and bordering Egypt. Additionally, five Israeli soldiers died in the last few hours, according to a new military toll, which brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of the incursion into Gaza on October 27 to 144.
The dead and humanitarian aid
According to the latest report from the Gaza Ministry of Health, the total death toll rose to 20,258, with 53,688 injured and nearly 7,000 people trapped under the rubble, as part of Israel’s bombing campaign against the Strip, in retaliation. for the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 that killed around 1,200 people and took 240 hostages, including twenty Argentines.
The war also produced 1.9 million displaced people in Gaza – 85 percent of the population – who are experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis due to the shortage of drinking water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel, in addition to the collapse of hospitals and the outbreak of epidemics in the middle of winter. The head of Gaza for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Thomas White, regretted that nothing had changed since the Security Council statement calling for the acceleration of the entry of humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians. “People continue to be pushed around Gaza into a smaller and smaller space. The arrival of aid trucks alone is not going to solve this problem,” he told Qatari television channel Al Jazeera.
“The way in which Israel is developing its offensive is causing enormous obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid within Gaza,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres. who also pointed out that the effective development of humanitarian operations in the Palestinian territory requires security, personnel who can work safely, logistical capacity and the resumption of commercial activity.
The negotiations
On the other hand, a delegation from the Islamic Jihad, led by its secretary general, Ziad Najalah, will address talks this Sunday in Cairo for a possible exchange of hostages for prisoners with Israel, a Palestinian diplomatic source informed the EFE news agency. Najalah pointed out as a condition that the exchange be “all for all”, that is, that it implies the release of all Israeli hostages for all Palestinian prisoners, in addition to putting a permanent end to the Israeli attack on Gaza, the source detailed.
In addition to this meeting that will be held with the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, General Abbas Kamel, there are preparations on the part of Egypt as a mediator to organize a tripartite meeting that also includes the head of the political wing of Hamas, Ismail Haniye, he assured. the fountain. Haniye met last Wednesday in the Egyptian capital with the country’s Director of Intelligence, with whom he discussed several proposals for prisoner exchanges to reach a second temporary truce. However, the Islamist group on Thursday rejected any exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners if it is not accompanied by a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
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