Once again, the Israeli army intensely bombarded the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing nearly 80 Palestinians, according to Hamas, which has ruled the enclave since 2007. IDF soldiers continue to wage fierce battles against the Islamist movement in the city. of Khan Younès, epicenter of the battle since the beginning of December.
In the fourth month of the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, the risks of the conflict spilling over are increasing with daily exchanges of fire on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the increase in attacks by Yemeni Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and the intensification American strikes in Yemen.
In the early hours of Friday, witnesses reported heavy fire and airstrikes in Khan Younes, the main town in the south of the Gaza Strip where according to Israel many members of the leadership of this group considered terrorist by the United States and the European Union.
More than 24,7620 dead in Gaza
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, 77 Palestinians died in Israeli strikes on Friday, including in Khan Younes.
Since October, 24,762 people, the vast majority women, children and adolescents, have been killed and 62,108 injured in Israeli operations, according to the report updated this Friday by the ministry.
The IDF reported fighting and bombings in northern Gaza, where “several terrorists were killed”.
Attacks would be carried out by isolated Hamas groups, according to the Israeli army, while the Gazou population is crowding into the south of the enclave, particularly in Rafah on the Egyptian border.
“Islamic Jihad propaganda manager” killed
The Israeli army announced the death on Thursday of Waël Abou Fanounah, presented as a “propaganda manager for Islamic Jihad”, another armed group in Gaza involved in the fighting.
This Palestinian, who was responsible for "distributing documentation on Israeli hostages", was "eliminated during a precise air strike", according to a military press release.
The war was sparked by an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 in southern Israel that killed 1,140 people, mostly civilians.
According to Israel, 132 people kidnapped in Gaza that day remain detained, 27 of whom are believed to have died.
This Friday, Russian diplomacy called on Hamas, during talks in Moscow, to release all its hostages, while judging that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, target of massive Israeli bombings, was of “catastrophic scale”.
Read alsoTo find hostages, the Israeli army exhumes bodies in Gaza
The bombings razed entire neighborhoods, caused a major humanitarian crisis and knocked out a large part of the hospitals in the Palestinian territory, on which Israel has imposed a total siege since October 9 after a land, air and sea blockade dating from 2007.
“The longest” internet shutdown since the start of the war
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, deplored “inhumane living conditions” in Gaza, where the cutoff of communications and the internet has persisted for a week.
This is “the longest” “almost total” outage since the start of the war, NetBlocks, an organization monitoring the world's telecommunications network, said on Friday.
⚠ Update: Live metrics show the near-total telecoms blackout in the #Gaza Strip has now passed the one-week mark;
at 168 hours, the disruption is the longest on record since the start of the Israel-Hamas war and continues to severely limit visibility into events on the ground 📉 pic.twitter.com/IVRbzmM2oa
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) January 19, 2024
NetBlocks measurements show that the Palestinian territory has been facing “an almost total telecommunications outage for 168 hours”, indicates the organization on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
This disruption “continues to seriously limit the visibility of what is happening on the ground.”
Detained Gazans subjected to ill-treatment, UN says
Thousands of men have been arrested by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war against Hamas and often subjected to ill-treatment that could amount to torture, the UN said on Friday.
Some of the prisoners claimed to have been blindfolded, beaten and eventually released with only diapers, the representative of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Ajit Sunghay, said at the regular UN briefing in Geneva.
The Israeli army reiterated to AFP that “those detained are treated in accordance with international law.
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Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers in Brussels
EU foreign ministers will meet separately with their counterparts from Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Brussels on Monday, according to AFP.
The head of Israeli diplomacy Israel Katz will be received Monday morning, then it will be the turn of the head of Palestinian diplomacy Riyad al-Maliki in the afternoon.
A meeting between the two men is not planned at this stage.
The 27 want to hear from the two men on ways to put an end to the violence in Gaza.
Other ministers from the region are expected in Brussels.
The Egyptian ministers Sameh Choukry, Saudi Faisal bin Farhane and Jordanian Ayman Safadi, as well as the secretary-general of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit, will have a working lunch with their European counterparts.
The European Union has repeatedly spoken out, like the United States, in favor of a two-state solution, to stabilize the region and bring peace.
Netanyahu unyielding
Faced with calls for a humanitarian truce, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains inflexible and wants to continue the war until, in particular, “the elimination of terrorist leaders” and “the return of our hostages home”.
He also said Thursday that "Israel must have security control of all the territory west of the Jordan River", which includes Israeli territory, the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and Gaza from which Israel is was unilaterally withdrawn in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.
A statement at odds with its American ally.