Israel and Hamas at war | Israel threatens to intensify its strikes on the Gaza Strip

Israel threatened on Wednesday to further intensify its strikes on Gaza, where at least 25 people have been killed since the transition to the year 2025, according to emergency services in the Palestinian territory, who are concerned about the already critical humanitarian situation after more than ‘one year of war.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, on the sidelines of a visit to Netivot, a town in Israel recently targeted by a rocket attack from the neighboring Gaza Strip, wanted to “send a clear message” to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

“If Hamas does not soon allow the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza […] and continues to fire on the Israeli population, it exposes itself to blows of an intensity that Gaza has not seen for a long time,” he threatened, after several rocket attacks on his country in recent days, who did not cause any injuries.

According to Gaza Civil Defense, three separate Israeli strikes have, however, caused at least 25 casualties across the Palestinian coastal strip since the early hours of the day.

“As the world celebrates the new year, we welcome 2025 with the first Israeli massacre in the Gaza Strip,” its spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told AFP.

The clock had barely struck midnight when an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia, in the north, left, according to him, 15 people dead and more than 20 injured among three displaced families, the Badra, Abou Warda and Taroush. .

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment.

“It’s a massacre, children and women are in pieces. Nobody knows why the house was targeted, there were only civilians,” testifies Jibril Abou Warda, 35, close to several victims.

AFP images show weeping women in front of bodies lined up on the ground, including those of children, before they are wrapped in white sheets.

“We don’t want humanitarian aid, we want the war to stop. Enough bloodshed! Enough ! “, says another bereaved relative, Khalil Abou Warda, as people behind him continue to search the rubble of the house.

Flooded tents

Since October 6, the Israeli army has been carrying out an intense land and air offensive in northern Gaza, particularly in Jabalia, in order to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there.

“There is nothing around me but ruins and desolation. People no longer know what to do or where to go. They don’t know how to survive,” says a UN humanitarian official, Jonathan Whittal, in a video after having managed to get there.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the war in the besieged Palestinian territory and are often reduced to sheltering in makeshift tents unsuitable for winter conditions.

“More than 1,500 tents sheltering displaced people have been flooded in camps across Gaza,” warns Gaza Civil Defense after a wave of bad weather in recent days.

“We haven’t slept for three days for fear that our children will get sick because of the winter, but also that missiles will fall on us,” says Samah Darabieh, who lives in the Beit Lahia camp in the north. from Gaza.

The Israeli body overseeing civil affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (COGAT) said on Wednesday that 55 patients, the majority of them children, had been evacuated from the Palestinian territory, along with 72 accompanying people, for treatment in the United Arab Emirates.

The war in Gaza was triggered by an 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 45,553 people were killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to a latest report on Wednesday from the Hamas Ministry of Health, whose data is considered reliable by the UN.