Bodies of six hostages found and identified
The Israeli army announced on Sunday, September 1, that it had identified the bodies of six hostages brought back from Gaza to Israel, including two women and four men, one Israeli-American and one Israeli-Russian. “The Army and the Shin Bet,” Israeli domestic intelligence, “have located [samedi] and recovered the bodies of hostages Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino from a tunnel in the Rafah area,” in the southern Gaza Strip, the army said in a statement. Five of them – aged 23 to 32 – had been abducted from the Nova techno music festival by Hamas commandos during the October 7 terrorist attack.
US President Joe Biden has vowed to work for the release of those still held in the Palestinian enclave“A deal for the return of the hostages has been on the table for two months. Without the delays, sabotage and pretexts, those whose deaths we learned of this morning would certainly still be alive,” denounces the Hostage Families Forum.
Calls for general strike in Israel to demand agreement for release of hostages
The army’s announcement this Sunday of the discovery of the bodies of six new hostages who died in a tunnel in the Palestinian territory has caused shock and anger in the country. The opposition leader and families of hostages called this Sunday for a general strike this Monday in Israel to force the government to reach an agreement to release the hundred captives still held in Gaza. The Hostage Families Forum urged Israelis to go demonstrate Sunday evening in Tel Aviv to demand “a total blockade of the country and the implementation of an agreement to release the hostages.”
Israel’s powerful trade union center, the Histadrut, has also decreed a “general strike” for Monday in order to force the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement for the release of the hundred hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. “We must stop this abandonment of hostages […]. Tomorrow at 6 o’clock [5 heures heure française, ndlr], “The entire Israeli economy will be on general strike,” Histadrut leader Arnon Bar-David said at a press conference on Sunday.
Netanyahu vows to ‘settle scores’ with Hamas
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatens to “settle one’s account” to the Palestinian Hamas, after the death of six hostages whose bodies were found in the Gaza Strip. “He who kills hostages does not want an agreement” for a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, he said, before adding: “We will pursue you, we will catch you and we will settle the score.”
Earlier, a Hamas leader, Ezzat Rishq, had said that Israel was “the person responsible for death” hostages “because he persists in continuing his genocidal war […] and to flee any ceasefire agreement.” In the Hamas attack on October 7, 251 people were abducted in Israel and taken to Gaza.
Three Israeli police officers killed in West Bank
The Israeli police commander announced that three Israeli police officers, including a woman, were killed this Sunday in the southern occupied West Bank. Two of the victims are in their thirties, while the third, a man in his fifties, succumbed to his injuries after being evacuated. The Israeli army had also announced on Saturday the death of one of its soldiers, on the fourth day of its operation in the occupied West Bank. Another soldier was “seriously injured”On the same day, Hamas’ armed wing reported that one of its fighters had died in “close combat” with Israeli soldiers in the camp.
Since the Israeli army launched its operation in the West Bank on Wednesday, August 28, at least 24 Palestinians have been killed, including two this Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the Israeli army reported. The Palestinian Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad have claimed that at least 14 of them were members of their armed wings. The Israeli army maintains that all the Palestinians killed were “terrorists”.
Gaza Civil Defense Announces 11 Dead in Israeli Strike
Officials in Gaza said at least 11 people were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that targeted police at a school housing dozens of families displaced by war in the Hamas-held Palestinian territory. “An Israeli strike on the Safad school where refugees were sheltering in Gaza City left 11 dead, including a woman and a girl, and dozens injured,” Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said. The strike targeted, according to a medical official in Gaza, “a room used by the police.” For its part, the Israeli army says it has targeted “Hamas terrorists who were operating from a control center in an area that was previously the Safad school.”
Polio vaccination campaign launched
The anti-polio campaign was officially launched this Sunday. To make it possible, “humanitarian breaks” are planned in the central Gaza Strip, the head of several vaccination centers for children told AFP. The vaccinations began at 9 a.m. (8 a.m. French time) and “We have opened the centres and we are receiving children aged from one day to ten years old, and things have been calm so far,” this official further specifies.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza and UN agencies have listed 67 vaccination centres in hospitals, clinics and schools for the centre of the small Palestinian territory. In the south, 59 centres are planned and 33 in the largely depopulated north. In these two areas, vaccinations will take place in a second and then a third phase. This campaign, announced by Israel and the government of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children under the age of ten in the besieged Palestinian territory devastated by nearly 11 months of war. Polio, eradicated in Gaza for twenty-five years, has reappeared in the midst of hostilities.
