Photo: Eyad Baba Agence France-Presse After a year of war, the Israeli army has been waging a new offensive in the northern Gaza Strip since October 6. Here we see a road in the center of the territory, through the window of a bus riddled with shrapnel.
Published at 8:22 AM Updated at 11:47 AM
The war between Israel and Hamas has left 770 dead in less than three weeks in the northern Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory's Civil Defense announced on Thursday, at a time when new talks are looming with a view to a truce.
Qatar announced that a meeting between US and Israeli negotiators was to be held in Doha, while mediators have “re-engaged” with Hamas after its leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by Israeli troops on October 16.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, visiting the emirate, said he expected negotiators to meet in the coming days, adding that the United States was considering “various options” to end the war in Gaza.
The fragile breakthrough, after months of failed mediation efforts by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, comes as Israel is waging war on two fronts, against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, two Islamist movements backed by Iran.
The US Secretary of State is continuing in Qatar his eleventh tour of the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza, which spread to Lebanon in September and has intensified in recent days.
On Wednesday evening, Israel carried out airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, one of Hezbollah’s strongholds, among the most massive since the start of the war, claiming to have targeted “weapons depots and workshops belonging to Hezbollah.”
Blinken warned Israel on Wednesday of the risk of escalation, as Iran said it was ready to retaliate in the event of an Israeli attack after Iran fired 200 missiles at Israel on October 1.
With less than two weeks to go before its presidential election, the United States sees the death of Yahya Sinaiour, who was seen as a frontal obstacle to negotiations, as a unique opportunity to end the war.
After a year of war, the Israeli army has been waging a new offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip since October 6, which has left 770 dead in 19 days, according to the Civil Defense, which considers this toll to be an underestimate.
In the center of the territory, at least 17 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school converted into a shelter for displaced people in the Nousseirat camp, announced Thursday the Civil Defense, an organization that depends on Hamas.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who announced Thursday a new American aid of 135 million dollars for the Palestinians, had affirmed Wednesday in Israel that “the time” had come to put an end to the war, triggered by the unprecedented attack carried out by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7 2023.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or who died in captivity. Of the 251 people kidnapped, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom the army has declared dead.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000In retaliation, Israel vowed to wipe out Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, and launched an offensive that has killed at least 42,847 Palestinians in total, mostly civilians, according to data from Hamas’s health ministry, which the UN believes is reliable.
The war has displaced nearly all of the besieged territory’s 2.4 million people, who are bracing for a second winter of increasingly severe shortages.
“We didn’t expect to live through another winter of war,” said to AFP Salah Abou al-Jabeen, a 32-year-old woman living in an overcrowded camp in Nousseirat.
In Lebanon, Israeli strikes targeted the regions of Tyre and Bint Jbeil in the south on Thursday, according to the Ani news agency, which also reported a drone strike on a car on the Beirut-Damascus highway east of the Lebanese capital, as well as fighting in two border villages, Aïta al-Chaab and Ramia.
The army announced that it had struck “more than 160 targets” of Hezbollah since the day before, which for its part claimed to be confronting Israeli soldiers in Aïta al-Chaab “at point-blank range”, “with automatic weapons and missiles”.
The Shiite movement also claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on a military base near Haifa and on Safed in the north of Israel.
After a year of war in Gaza, the Israeli army has shifted the focus of its operations to Lebanon, where it launched a campaign of airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds on September 23, followed by ground operations in the south on September 30. Israel says it wants to neutralize Hezbollah in the border regions of southern Lebanon and allow the return to northern Israel of 60,000 residents displaced by incessant rocket fire over the past year.
At least 1,552 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP count based on official data. The UN has counted some 800,000 displaced people.
The international community has raised $800 million at a conference in Paris on Thursday to raise funds for displaced people in Lebanon, which is mired in chaos and already crippled before the war by a dual economic and political crisis.
Before the leaders of the BRICS countries gathered in Russia, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for pressure “for a ceasefire in Gaza” and to “stop the spread of the war in Lebanon.”
His Iranian counterpart, Massoud Pezeshkian, deplored the UN’s ineffectiveness in “putting out the fire.”
The Civil Defense of the Gaza Strip announced on Thursday that it was no longer able to continue its relief activities in the north of the Palestinian territory due to Israeli “threats” weighing on its teams.
“We regret that we can no longer provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern Gaza Strip due to threats by the Israeli occupation forces to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside the Jabalia (refugee) camp,” Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the first aid service, told AFP.
Aid workers “have been targeted,” several have been injured and others have been left for dead “on the roads,” he said.
M. Bassal also posted on social media a photo of a completely burned vehicle, explaining that it was the “only Civil Defense vehicle in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip” and that it had been “targeted by the Israeli army” in Beit Lahia, located north of Jabalia and near the border with Israel.
The Israeli army said on Thursday that it was continuing its operations in the Jabalia area and had “eliminated dozens of terrorists.”
The Palestinian Islamist movement regularly issues statements claiming that it is fighting the Israeli army in the surrounding area.
Since the army surrounded Jabalia and called on the population to evacuate to the south, crossing points have been set up to control the residents. The operation was then extended to an area that includes the town of Beit Lahia and its surroundings.
But many Gazans told AFP that they could not leave the combat zones, like Ragheb Hamouda, a 30-year-old father who says that “every square centimeter of the Gaza Strip is dangerous.”
He says the school he had taken refuge in with his wife and three young children was home to “thousands of people” but was demolished by the army. He arrived in Gaza City on Thursday morning, after hours of wandering, sometimes “under fire.”
Despite the Israeli authorities’ announcement that they would facilitate the passage of humanitarian aid, NGOs and residents say they see no immediate change on the ground where the humanitarian situation remains dire.
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