Photo: Bashar Taleb Agence France-Presse A young girl watches a crowd of Palestinians crowding near a bakery in Khan Younis in the hope of getting bread.
Cyril Julien – Agence France-Presse, Shaun Tandon – Agence France-Presse, Tony Gamal-Gabriel – Agence France-Presse respectively in Jerusalem, Riyadh and Beirut
Published at 10:41 AM Updated at 2:41 PM
- Middle East
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that “the time” had come to end the war in Gaza and called on Israel to avoid “further escalation” in its expected response to the Iranian missile attack.
After Israel, Blinken continued his tour in Riyadh aimed at containing the military escalation in the region, a month after the start of the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.
In southern Lebanon, many families have fled Tyre, targeted by strikes on Wednesday after the Israeli army called for neighborhoods in this coastal city of around 14,500 inhabitants to be evacuated.
“The situation is very bad, we are evacuating everyone,” Blinken told AFP Mortada Mhanna, who heads the local crisis management center.
Mr. Blinken’s visit to the region is his eleventh since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, which spilled over into Lebanon in September after all attempts at international mediation for a ceasefire failed.
“Months of fighting”
Mr. Blinken said on Wednesday that the “time” had come to end the war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
He said Israel had achieved “most of its strategic objectives” in the Palestinian territory, “with the idea of ensuring that October 7 can never happen again.”
After that attack, Israel had vowed to destroy Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.
On Tuesday, Blinken said the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli troops on October 16, offered an “important opportunity to bring home the hostages” taken to Gaza on October 7 and “end the war.”
A Hamas source also told AFP that a senior Hamas official arrived in Moscow on Wednesday to discuss “ending” the war.
The Secretary of State also called on Israel on Tuesday to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, noting “progress” in this area that he deemed insufficient.
A security source, however, said Wednesday that the Israeli military was prepared for “months of fighting” in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel is not waging “a war on Gaza, or another war on Lebanon,” but “a war on Iran, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, through Iran’s allies,” the source added.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Blinken said it was “very important that Israel respond in a way that does not create further escalation,” as Iran said it was determined to retaliate in the event of an Israeli attack after Iran fired 200 missiles at its territory on October 1.
Before arriving in Riyadh, where he was received by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the head of American diplomacy called on Israel to seize “the incredible opportunity” to normalize its relations with Saudi Arabia. He is due to go to Qatar on Thursday.
Photo: Bashar Taleb Agence France-Presse Palestinians live in makeshift shelters near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Polio vaccination postponed
In the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization has postponed a polio vaccination campaign that was due to begin in the north of the territory, where the Israeli army has been waging a new offensive against Hamas since October 6.
It cited “intensive bombing and orders for mass displacement” of the population.
According to the Civil Defense, a strike killed four people on Wednesday in Gaza City.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) also announced the death of one of its Palestinian employees in a strike in Khan Younis, in the south of the Palestinian territory.
The Israeli offensive launched in Gaza in retaliation for the attack of October 7, 2023, killed at least 42,792 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
In Israel, the attack resulted in the death of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or killed in captivity.
Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
Read also
- In northern Gaza, terrified Palestinians flee Israeli offensive
- Blinken calls on Israel to use Sinwar’s death to broker a ceasefire in Gaza
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“On the brink of collapse”
In Lebanon, the Israeli army continued its airstrikes in the south and east of the country on Wednesday, two strongholds of Hezbollah, according to the Lebanese news agency ANI, as well as its ground operations in southern Lebanon, launched on September 30.
“Lebanon is on the brink of collapse,” warned the head of German diplomacy, Annalena Baerbock, in Beirut, on the eve of an international conference on the country in Paris.
Israel claims to want to neutralize Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, which borders its territory, and to allow the return to northern Israel of 60,000 residents displaced by incessant rocket fire over the past year.
Although weakened, Hezbollah claims daily rocket fire on Israel and claimed to have targeted a military base near Tel Aviv, in the center of the country, and two others near Haifa, in the north, on Wednesday.
Hezbollah confirmed on Wednesday the death in an Israeli strike of Hashem Safieddine, the expected successor to the head of Hassan Nasrallah's Shiite movement, himself killed in the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27.
At least 1,552 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of the Israeli airstrike campaign on September 23, according to an AFP count based on official data.
The UN has counted some 800,000 displaced people in the country, and according to Lebanese authorities, nearly 500,000 people have fled to Syria.
A Western diplomat said Wednesday that a deployment of international forces in southern Lebanon alongside the Lebanese army had been raised by Western countries as a possibility in the event of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.