2023-12-23 21:53:00
Photo: AFP.
The Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas declared five Israeli hostages dead this Saturday that it had held since October 7 as a result of an attack by the Israeli Army in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli bombing continued with intensity while waiting for the more humanitarian aid enters after the resolution approved this Friday by the UN Security Council.
“As a result of a barbaric Zionist bombing, contact has been lost with a group responsible for five Zionist prisoners,” said the spokesman for the Ezzeldin al Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubeidade, in a statement collected by the Palestine On Line portal, cited by the Europa Press news agency.
“We assume that the hostages have died in one of these Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip,” the organization adds in its message, in which it identifies three of the hostages by name: Haim Perry, Yoram Metzger and Amiram Cooper, among them. 80 and 84 years old, who appeared alive in a video published by Hamas last Monday.
The Hamas Health Ministry reported an Israeli bombing of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, saying the attack left at least 18 dead, including several children, and dozens injured.
More than a hundred hostages were freed last November in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners during a week-long truce reached in late November between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel launched an offensive against the area after the attacks carried out on October 7 by Hamas, which left some 1,200 dead and nearly 240 kidnapped, including twenty Argentines. The Gazan authorities, controlled by the Islamist group, have estimated that more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and 53,000 injured, to which another 300 have been added at the hands of the Israeli Army and by attacks by settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Israeli bombings and fighting continued this Saturday in the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian population awaits the arrival of more humanitarian aid after a resolution in that regard approved this Friday by the United Nations Security Council (UN). ).
Photo: AFP.
After five days of arduous negotiations to avoid the United States veto, the Security Council adopted a text that demands the “immediate” and “large-scale” sending of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, the AFP news agency reported.
The document avoids calling for a “ceasefire”, an unacceptable condition for Israel and the United States, its great ally, but calls for “creating the conditions for a lasting cessation of hostilities.”
However, the implementation of the resolution this Saturday raised many questions: the humanitarian aid, which enters the Palestinian enclave in dribs and drabs from Egypt and from the Kerem Shalom crossing, is far from the needs of the population, on the verge of famine, according to the UN.
Photo: AFP.
“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 on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Before the resolution, Israel, which checks trucks entering Gaza, criticized the way UN agencies were distributing aid. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen insisted on this issue.
“The Security Council’s decision underscores the need to ensure that the United Nations is more effective in transferring humanitarian aid and to ensure that aid reaches its destination and is not in the hands of Hamas terrorists,” he said in X.
On the Palestinian side, the ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansur, affirmed that the resolution is “a step in the right direction” but that it must be accompanied by “an immediate ceasefire.”
Photo: AFP.
More bluntly, Hamas, which governs Gaza, considered that the resolution is “insufficient” and “does not respond to the catastrophic situation created by the Zionist war machine.”
Furthermore, according to a statement issued this Saturday by Israel, around 200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militiamen have been detained this last week in Gaza and transferred to Israeli territory.
These “agents”, according to the statement, will now be subjected to interrogation by Unit 504 of the Shin Bet and the Directorate of Military Intelligence, the Times of Israel newspaper reported.
According to Army estimates, more than 700 militants have been detained and taken to Israeli territory since the beginning of the offensive in Gaza.
Photo: AFP.
The Army released images showing soldiers advancing through ruins and opening fire in Issa, south of Gaza City, with automatic weapons fire.
“Several terrorist infrastructures were located, including buildings used as military sites by Hamas, and were destroyed,” he added.
The Hamas Health Ministry reported an Israeli bombing of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, saying the attack left at least 18 dead, including several children, and dozens injured.
The attack occurred shortly after Israeli planes destroyed a water desalination plant in the city of Jabaliya, in the north of the Palestinian enclave.
In addition, dozens of people were killed in Israeli rocket and artillery attacks on residential buildings in the Jabaliya refugee camp,” according to Qatari television channel Al Jazeera.
Photo: AFP.
Likewise, the Palestinian Red Crescent denounced another “intense bombing” on the city of Khan Yunis, in the vicinity of Al Amal Hospital.
“My message to the world is to look at us, to see us, to see that we are dying. Why are you not paying attention?” lamented Wala Al Medini, a displaced person who had to leave the Bureij camp after receiving a evacuation notice from the Israeli army.
The Israeli Army’s announcement led thousands of Palestinians to flee to Deir al Balah, the closest refuge from the hostilities.
“More than 150,000 people have been affected and the area is already overwhelmed by displaced people, including UNRWA shelters,” the head of Gaza for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Thomas White, reported in X.
Photo: AFP.
The conflict has destroyed much of Gaza, a small territory of 362 square kilometers and 2.4 million inhabitants.
Israeli bombings forced 1.9 million people to leave their homes, 85% of the population, according to the UN.
After more than two months of war, only nine of the 36 hospitals in the enclave are partially operational, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The UN Secretary General recalled this Friday that 136 UN workers died in 75 days. This is “something that has never been seen in the history of the UN,” Guterres warned in X, adding that “the majority” of UN staff “have been forced to leave their homes.”
Photo: AFP.
Only a humanitarian ceasefire will allow us to “begin to respond to the desperate needs of the people of Gaza and put an end to their nightmare,” he added.
For his part, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that “famine is imminent in Gaza.”
At the diplomatic level, efforts by Egypt and Qatar to achieve a new truce continue, after the week-long cessation at the end of November, which allowed the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinians detained in Israel.
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