2023-12-27 22:35:17
Israel destroys central Gaza… killing dozens of Palestinians
Israeli forces attacked the central Gaza Strip from land, sea and air on Wednesday, and Palestinian authorities said that dozens of people were killed, including 20 in one attack.
In a manifestation of Israel’s insistence on crushing Hamas, despite increasing international calls for a ceasefire, Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy said on Tuesday that the war will continue for many months, and that there are no “shortcuts to dismantling a terrorist organization.”
A statement by the Ministry of Health in Gaza said that an Israeli air strike killed 20 Palestinians today, near Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip. There has been no comment yet from the Israeli army.
The communications outage in most parts of the Gaza Strip hampered efforts to reach the dead Palestinians during the night, but it gradually returned in the morning.
A photo taken from southern Israel on the border with the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2023 shows smoke rising following the Israeli bombing of the Palestinian territories (AFP)
Medics said that five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on Al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip. Health officials also said that Al-Shifa Hospital received seven bodies of Palestinians killed in Gaza City, north of the Strip, at night.
Residents reported that fierce fighting took place east and north of Bureij and in the nearby village of Juhr al-Dik, where they said Israeli tanks were stationed.
The Israeli army said today that three more soldiers were killed in battles in the Gaza Strip, bringing the number of deaths among its ranks since the start of the ground invasion of the Strip on October 20 to 166.
Since Hamas killed 1,200 and detained 240 on October 7, according to Israeli statistics, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a comprehensive attack on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, which led to the destruction of most of the Gaza Strip.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that Israeli forces killed 195 Palestinians and wounded 325 others in the past 24 hours, bringing the recorded number to 21,110 dead and 55,243 wounded in Israeli attacks on the Palestinian coastal enclave since October 7.
Almost all of the Strip’s 2.3 million residents have become homeless, many of whom have been displaced multiple times.
Meanwhile, a huge clock in Tel Aviv counts the time since Hamas took the hostages, while families continued their campaign for the release of their loved ones.
Lebanese border
Israel intensified its attacks this week in the center of the Gaza Strip in particular, and asked civilians to leave the area, although many say that there is no longer a safe place to go.
The Israeli army said today that its planes also targeted Hezbollah military sites and other sites in Lebanon. A large bill of smoke was seen at the border.
Security sources said that Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, launched the largest number of missiles and drones once morest Israel today, in one day since the start of the wave of daily clashes.
To highlight the difficulties of treating the wounded in Gaza, the World Health Organization published photos, most of which were taken on Monday and Tuesday, in several hospitals in the Strip. The organization’s emergency medical team coordinator, Sean Casey, described the current health sector capacity in the Strip as 20 percent of what it was 80 days ago.
“There is blood everywhere in those hospitals right now,” Casey said in describing the situation, adding that there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip.
He continued: “Almost all we see are cases of very serious injuries on a scale that is truly difficult to believe… It is a bloodbath, and as we said before, it is a massacre.”
Casey said there is no safe place in Gaza.
For its part, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed today that the Palestinian Red Crescent Society compound in Khan Yunis was bombed on Tuesday. The Red Cross said on the “X” website that the raid caused damage and caused panic among those working there and the displaced people taking shelter in the facility.
Israel says that it is doing everything it can to protect civilians and holds Hamas responsible for exposing them to harm because of launching its attacks from areas where there are civilians, which Hamas denies. But even the United States, Israel’s closest ally, said it must make more efforts to reduce the number of civilian deaths due to what US President Joe Biden described as “indiscriminate bombing.”
The Israeli army said that it continues to strike what it described as “terrorist targets” in the Gaza Strip, and has sometimes used the navy to strike suspects it considers to pose a threat to its ground forces.
In the Shujaiya neighborhood in Gaza City, an Israeli army statement said that an Israeli attack on gunmen on foot caused secondary explosions, indicating that the area had been mined with explosives to attack the soldiers.
West Bank
The Palestinian Ministry of Health explained that six were killed in the city of Tulkarm in the West Bank during an Israeli raid.
An Israeli military statement regarding the incident said: “Israeli forces were carrying out an anti-terrorism operation and were attacked by gunmen who threw explosive devices at them.”
The statement added that an Israeli Air Force plane bombed the attackers.
Residents said that the young men were neither fighters nor extremists, and were far from the areas where the clashes broke out.
Saida Al-Famawi, the mother of one of the young men, explained: “It was a sight that I might not see, it was something that you cannot look at.”
In an interview with Egyptian television, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that Israel intends to remain in the Gaza Strip following the war, but the world does not agree to that.
He added that the United States might “order” Israel to agree to the Gaza Strip becoming part of a future Palestinian state.
An Israeli soldier was killed
For its part, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, announced this evening that its fighters “sniped” an Israeli soldier east of the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, during the ongoing battles there. In the northern Gaza Strip, the Brigades reported on their Telegram account that they were able to kill and injure Israeli soldiers holed up in a house in the Jabalia al-Balad area, following targeting them with an anti-fortified missile. They also carried out an attack on a helicopter with a SAM-18 missile in the Saftawi area.
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