More than 30 people were killed by Israeli strikes on Saturday, according to Gaza emergency services, the day after Hamas announced the resumption of negotiations for a truce in the Palestinian territory, devastated by nearly 15 months of war.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened on Wednesday to further intensify strikes in Gaza if the Palestinian Islamist movement continued to fire rockets into his country.
Since then, projectiles have been fired almost daily from Palestinian territory, and the Israeli army continues its raids while Hamas announced on Friday that talks for a truce were resuming in Doha.
The Hamas government’s Health Ministry in Gaza reported 136 deaths in the past 48 hours. Figures, deemed reliable by the UN, significantly higher than those communicated in recent weeks.
Gazan emergency services announced that at least 31 people were killed on Saturday in several Israeli strikes across the coastal strip.
One of these strikes, according to the same source, completely destroyed the house of the al-Ghoula family in Gaza City in the early morning, causing 11 victims, including seven children and a woman.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment.
“Everything shook”
“A big explosion woke us up, everything shook. I was surprised to see that it was the house of our neighbors, the al-Ghoula family. It was inhabited by children and women. There was no one wanted [par Israël] or who represented a danger,” testifies Ahmed Moussa.
AFP images in the Choujaiya district show residents searching through still smoking rubble and bodies lined up on the ground, wrapped in white sheets.
The Gaza Civil Defense also indicated that five security agents, responsible for escorting humanitarian convoys, had been killed by an Israeli strike while they were driving in Khan Younes, in the south of the Palestinian territory plagued by a serious humanitarian crisis.
Local emergency services also reported the deaths of 15 other people in strikes across the entire territory, both in the north, center and south.
It is in this context that indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel resume in Doha.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized his country’s negotiators on Thursday to continue talks in Qatar with a view to an agreement for the release of hostages held in Gaza since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Palestinian movement announced on Friday that this new round of exchanges would include a “complete cessation of hostilities” and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, which Israel has not confirmed.
American arms sale
Despite intense diplomatic efforts led under the aegis of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, no truce has been concluded since the one that took place at the end of November 2023 for a week.
Hamas’ military wing released a new video on Saturday of a hostage, 19-year-old Israeli woman Liri Elbag, who called on her government to act to secure her release.
Furthermore, despite opposition from human rights organizations and certain elected Democrats, the American administration of Joe Biden nevertheless announced an arms sale to Israel estimated at $8 billion. This transaction, which must still be approved by Congress, notably includes anti-aircraft defense munitions.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
At least 45,717 people, mainly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in Gaza, according to the latest report on Saturday from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
