2023-11-05 02:25:55
The women baked bread. The children were getting ready to have breakfast. And then the missiles fell. The Al-Fakhoura school, administered by the United Nations in the Jabalia camp, was blown up, once again leaving the international community stunned by another incomprehensible chapter of violence. A father told Reuters: “Suddenly the bombing started. I found my two daughters. One died after being hit in the head. The second was wounded in the leg. Another girl was injured by shrapnel.
The UN denounced this Saturday the serious damage suffered by the school, which was part of its network hosting displaced families and which until October 12 provided shelter to 16,000 refugees. A missile entered the building and killed the women who were baking bread. Another hit the patio, where dozens of tents were installed. The United Nations confirmed that the armed conflict has turned into Herod’s massacre and that, once again, there were children among the dead.
Just a few hours after the air attack against an ambulance in Gaza, with 15 dead and 60 injured as a result, a new air raid announced that Israel is going all out in the north of the Strip. And whoever is in the middle will be overwhelmed. At least fifteen people died as a result of the bombs that fell on the school, although Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, director of Al-Shifa hospital, said that their number will increase based on the serious injuries suffered by the 50 injured in the explosions. Added to them are two other fatalities and more than 25 people injured in two attacks against hospitals, one of them children’s. It was one of the most intense blows that the Strip has known since the beginning of the offensive. Israel maintains its target in Jabalia. He has punished her at least four times since Tuesday for dismantling the compound that Hamas dug beneath.
Precisely, the lethal operations deployed in recent days – which the UN and other organizations consider atrocious and perhaps war crimes – reveal the determination of the Defense Forces to end Hamas’s underground infrastructure in the Strip. In fact, the two bombs that the fighters dropped on the Ybalia refugee camp last Tuesday, unleashing a massacre of civilians, included a thousand kilos of explosive and, apparently, detonators that were activated when the projectiles penetrated the ground so that the wave expansive devastation the galleries. The effect was also devastating on the surface. Even so, Israel has a more powerful bomb, with three tons of explosive. A total of 83 countries, which does not include this one but does include the United States, maintain an agreement not to use this type of weapons in populated areas.
Some analysts interpret that what Tel Aviv is doing is also a demonstration of strength against groups like Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad that launch rockets against Israel practically daily from Syria and Lebanon, where yesterday the Israelis destroyed several launch systems. But there are two aspects to take into account. One is the 240 Hamas captives hostages. Sources from this group revealed last night that 60 would be missing and under rubble after the latest bombings, although neither Tel Aviv nor international agencies had confirmed the information at least until the early hours of this morning.
Another issue is that some 400,000 civilians still live in Gaza and, contrary to what was expected, there are more every day because a return flow has been established of those who went south and are now returning to the catastrophic living conditions they found. This Saturday, the Government gave a new ultimatum, limited to only three hours, between one and four in the afternoon, for residents to evacuate the north, in what seemed like a warning that the bombings would intensify shortly. As expected, the warning had little effect. Most people have already resigned themselves to what may happen in the north. They lack a place to move to or live with sick or elderly people incapable of moving.
“Eliminate” Yahya Sinwar
«The fighting is progressing well, step by step. Many terrorists are being killed. Twelve commanders have been killed. “We are dismantling Hamas battalion by battalion,” declared Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, after a two-day visit to the front in which he found thousands of reservists “prepared to fight until victory,” in a veiled allusion to the fact that the offensive is still in its prologue.
Gallant introduced a new variable into the conflict: the search for traitors to the jihadist leadership. On the same day that the troops demolished another property belonging to the head of Hamas, Ismaël Haniyeh, a refugee in Qatar, the minister recalled his priority of “reaching” the head of the militia in the Strip, Yahya Sinwar, and “eliminating him.” “But if Gaza residents arrive before us, the war will be shortened,” he harangued.
Meanwhile, hand-to-hand fighting has become widespread in Gaza City. A total of 120 Hamas positions were destroyed, including underground passageways and bunkers in a single day. Some captured jihadists have begun to speak during interrogations by the Shin Bet, the Israeli Intelligence service, which has provided the military with precise information about buildings that serve as militia bases and tunnel mouths. In several of these, exchanges of fire took place in which a dozen Islamists and at least four Israeli soldiers were killed, bringing the total number of casualties in the army in a week to 28.
The ground troops also entered southern Gaza this Saturday in a “limited” night raid, a type of operation in which they seem to be lavished lately so that the soldiers make contact with this small portion of territory. Engineering forces and tanks destroyed dozens of booby traps and mapped built-up areas, perhaps because Tel Aviv is interested in expanding the offensive to this enclave despite having sent northern Gazans here to seek refuge.
#Israel #bombs #Jabalia #lavishes #ground #raids #southern #Gaza