2023-10-30 10:30:02
Bombings and raids by the Israeli army on the northern Gaza Strip, October 29, 2023. A photo taken from Sderot, Israel.
Day after day, the face of a terrible war appears. Monday, October 30, it was forty-eight hours since the Israeli army launched – after preparations and waiting for several weeks – a military operation in Gaza with the intention of carrying out the « destruction » of Hamas, as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant recalled on Friday, just before it was launched. The Israeli forces, however, have not sent entire divisions to attack the enclave where Hamas fighters (around 30,000 men, reinforced by volunteers), those of Islamic Jihad (a few thousand) and small groups await them. more marginal groups, hidden in a defensive system including a giant underground network.
Israeli forces engaged in Gaza, whose number remains unknown, are advancing in several points of the enclave, notably in the northernmost part, between the sea and Beit Hanoun. On Sunday, the army was engaged in several ground battles. At the same time, airstrikes, the most massive since the start of this conflict, fell on the enclave. According to the Israeli general staff, more than 450 of these bombings were launched in the previous twenty-four hours. The first began the day after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7. In Gaza, this has resulted in growing chaos and widespread destruction.
The death toll since the start of the bombings, according to the Ministry of Health in the Palestinian territory administered by Hamas, now exceeds 8,000 deaths. On Saturday, civil defense in Gaza estimated that “Hundreds of buildings and houses were completely destroyed.” The worst is undoubtedly to come. The Israeli army considers that the Islamist movement has built its underground military infrastructure by favoring areas where hospitals, mosques and schools are located above ground.
“Civil order is collapsing”
Strikes have already targeted the area around Al-Quds hospital on Sunday. “We received threats” of Israel for “immediately evacuate the hospital because it was going to be bombed”declared the director of the hospital, Bachar Mourad, quoted by Agence France-Presse. “We reiterate that it is impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without putting their lives in danger”for his part alerted the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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