Dozens of people were killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight from Saturday to Sunday, as the Palestinian movement Hamas says it needs more time to study a proposal for a second truce in its war with Israel.
The Hamas health ministry said Sunday that at least 92 people were killed overnight.
An Israeli strike hit a kindergarten in Rafah (south) where people who had fled the fighting had found refuge, according to the press office of the Islamist movement's government.
According to an AFP journalist, the Israeli army continued its bombings on Khan Younes, a large partly devastated southern city, where, according to Israel, Hamas officials are hiding.
Air strikes also targeted Rafah, further south, according to the same source, as fears grow over a possible military offensive against this overpopulated city, on the closed border with Egypt.
In this city of 200,000 inhabitants, more than a million displaced Palestinians, threatened by shortages and epidemics, are now crowded into shelters and makeshift camps.
Also read: Hamas-Israel War: Israeli army admits to flooding Hamas tunnels
“We want this war to end because we are exhausted. We hope to return home, even if our houses are in ruins
,” said Abdelsalam Abou al-Shaar, who fled Gaza City in the north of the territory.
“We are defenseless civilians.
Why are they bombing everyone?”
.
Hamas counts 27,365 dead in Gaza
Israel's ground offensive, launched on October 27 in the north of the Gaza Strip, extended to the south, to Khan Younes, at the beginning of December.
For Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Rafah is the next target.
“We will reach Rafah and eliminate the terrorist elements that threaten us
,” he said on Thursday.
The Hamas Ministry of Health announced on Sunday a toll of 27,365 people killed, mostly women, children and adolescents, in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Hamas studies truce plan
On the diplomatic front, American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected in the Middle East on Sunday to support negotiations on a new truce between Israel and Hamas.
He is scheduled to travel to Qatar, Egypt, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia.
Negotiations are continuing to reach a second truce, longer than the one week which allowed at the end of November the release of around a hundred hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel.
Some 250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza on October 7, according to Israel, and 132 hostages remain held.
Among them, 27 were declared dead by the army.
The leader of Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh, based in Qatar, is expected in Egypt to discuss a draft agreement drawn up by Qatari, American and Egyptian mediators.
It first plans a six-week truce with the release of 200 to 300 Palestinians detained in Israel in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages, according to a source from Hamas, an organization classified as “
terrorist”
by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
In Beirut, a leader of the Palestinian movement, Osama Hamdane, stressed that it was premature to talk about an agreement on a truce.
The project
“is a framework agreement that needs to be studied
,” he said.
New American strikes
Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007, demands a definitive ceasefire.
This is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses despite growing pressure from hostage relatives and the international community.
In Tel Aviv, several hundred people demonstrated again on Saturday, demanding the return of the hostages and the resignation of the government.
Also read: In Israel, black humor as a remedy for war
On other fronts in the region, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Saturday that Israeli forces had targeted
"more than 3,400 targets"
of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and killed 200
"terrorists and commanders"
since october.
“More than 50 targets”
of Hezbollah in Syria were attacked, he added.
On the Israeli-Lebanese border, there are daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, and the Israeli army.
Elsewhere in the region, Syria and Iraq have denounced deadly strikes carried out against pro-Iran groups on their territories by the United States, in retaliation for an attack on an American military base in Jordan on January 28 which cost life for three soldiers.
On Saturday, the United States, Israel's main supporter, along with the United Kingdom, announced they had bombed dozens of targets in Yemen, in response to repeated attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on ships.