Health authorities in the Gaza Strip said on Wednesday that 21,110 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military operations targeting the Strip since the outbreak of war with Hamas on October 7.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza added that the toll includes 195 dead and 325 injured during the past 24 hours.
She also explained that since the outbreak of the war, the number of injured people in the besieged Palestinian Strip has reached 55,243 people, according to Reuters.
For its part, Associated Press reported that the Israeli army is launching “violent strikes” on the southern and central Gaza Strip, after expanding the scope of its attack.
The agency quoted residents as saying that there were violent bombardments on the Bureij refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip, and in the city of Khan Yunis and the town of Rafah in the south, areas where tens of thousands took refuge after a large part of northern Gaza was bombed and turned into rubble.
From Al-Bureij camp, where he has taken refuge since fleeing his home in northern Gaza, citizen Rami Abu Musab said, “It was a night of hell. We have not witnessed such bombing since the beginning of the war.”
He added that warplanes flew overhead and the echoes of gunfire and explosions echoed from the eastern border of the camp, which – like other camps in Gaza – houses refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants, and now resembles other densely populated neighborhoods, according to the Associated Press.
Abu Musab explained that a house near his home was bombed, but no paramedics were able to reach the area.
Mobile phone and Internet service was cut off for several hours before it was gradually restored on Wednesday, the latest outage of its kind that complicated rescue efforts.
On Tuesday, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, General Herzi Halevy, said that “the war will last for many months,” pointing out that Israel “will follow various methods in order to ensure that the achievement lasts a long time.”
He continued: “The IDF is about to complete the dismantling of the Hamas brigades in the northern Gaza Strip… and we will also reach the Hamas leadership, whether that takes a week or months.”
In the West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced, on Wednesday, the killing of 6 Palestinians in Tulkarm, while the Palestinian News Agency “Wafa” reported that they were killed in a raid launched by an Israeli march.
The ministry said in a brief statement that the dead arrived at Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital in Tulkarm, in addition to a serious injury.
“Wafa” explained that “they were killed at dawn on Wednesday, as a result of an Israeli drone bombing them in the Nour Shams camp, east of Tulkarm.”
The agency published the names of the dead, between the ages of 17 and 29, noting that “Israeli military units carried out an operation in the city of Tulkarm and the Nour Shams camp on Wednesday night.”
Agence France-Presse indicated that the Israeli army refused to immediately comment on information about the operation in Tulkarm.
For his part, the Secretary-General of the Fatah movement, Iyad al-Jarra’, announced, in the wake of the deaths, a strike on Wednesday in Tulkarm Governorate, covering all aspects of life, according to Wafa.
More than 300 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces’ fire, and in some cases by Israeli settlers, since the war that broke out on October 7, according to estimates by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
On the other hand, the Israeli army says that its military activities in the West Bank are aimed at “pursuing those wanted on terrorist charges.”
US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, called during a phone call with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi, earlier this month, for the need to protect civilians in Gaza and prevent acts of violence committed by extremist settlers in the West Bank.
On October 7, war broke out between Israel and Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, after attacks carried out by the latter on areas and towns around the Gaza Strip.
These attacks resulted in the killing of about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, including women and children, and the kidnapping of about 240 by the Palestinian movement and transporting them to the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli authorities.
In response, Israel launches continuous bombardment on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 21,000 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza health authorities, destroying the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure, and placing it under a complete siege.
Against the backdrop of the war, tensions increased on the Lebanese-Israeli border, in light of mutual bombing between Hezbollah and the Israeli army.
The Red Sea off the coast of Yemen is also witnessing increasing attacks by the Houthi rebels on cargo ships, as part of their support for the Hamas movement in Gaza.
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2023-12-27 11:54:32
