(Rafah) Intense artillery fire and bombardments hit the town of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on Thursday, where the Israeli army announced that it controlled a strategic buffer zone between the Palestinian territory and Egypt.
Updated yesterday at 4:06 p.m.
Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Wednesday that the war between his country and Hamas could continue for “another seven months” in order to achieve the goal of destroying the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in Gaza. since 2007 and author of an unprecedented attack in Israel on October 7.
Despite the international indignation raised by the deadly bombing on Sunday of a displaced persons camp in Rafah, the Israeli army continues its strikes and its ground offensive in the overpopulated city, launched on May 7 to, according to it, eliminate the last Hamas battalions.
After beginning operations in the east of the city, it progressed towards the west, leading to the exodus in three weeks of around a million people, according to the UN, including more than 32,000 in the last two days. , mostly displaced again on the roads to already overpopulated areas of the besieged territory.
“Oxygen Hose”
The army said on Thursday that it had targeted 50 targets across the Gaza Strip the day before.
Artillery fire took place in Zeitoun, a district of Gaza City, according to AFP journalists. Also in the north, Israeli forces targeted Beit Lahia and the Jabalia camp, according to witnesses.
In the center of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians were burying relatives killed in a nighttime strike in Nousseirat, according to an AFP journalist. At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, an AFP correspondent saw malnourished children waiting to receive treatment.
In Rafah, witnesses reported intense artillery shelling and gunfire in the center and west of the city. According to Israel, 300 Palestinian fighters have been killed since ground operations began in the city.
An AFP journalist saw many Palestinians fleeing the western sector of Rafah.
The army announced Wednesday evening that it had taken control “in recent days” of the Philadelphia Corridor, a 14-kilometer-long buffer zone that borders the Egyptian border along the south of the Gaza Strip, near Rafah.
“The Philadelphia corridor served as an oxygen pipe for Hamas, through which it regularly transported weapons to the Gaza Strip,” said Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
Egypt has denied the existence of tunnels under the border, saying Israel was seeking to justify its Rafah offensive.
Cairo and Israel also blame each other for blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid through the Rafah border post, the only crossing point between the Palestinian territory and Egypt, since the Israeli army took over. took control, on the Palestinian side, in early May.
This crossing point is crucial for the entry of aid which the population of the Gaza Strip, devastated by almost eight months of war, desperately needs.
The UN and NGOs regularly warn of a risk of famine in the besieged Palestinian territory, where products enter in dribs and drabs via other crossings. On Thursday, according to AFP correspondents, 17 Egyptian trucks loaded with humanitarian aid were waiting to cross the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel.
Call for a peace conference
In Israel, the center-right party of Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, tabled a bill on Thursday to dissolve Parliament and hold early elections, provoking a response from Likud, the right-wing party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu .
Such a scenario would mean “a capitulation to international pressure and a fatal blow to efforts to free our hostages,” according to Likud.
The October 7 attack in Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to a count carried out by AFP based on the latest official data available.
Of the 252 people taken as hostages during the attack, 121 are still being held in Gaza, of whom 37 have died according to the army.
Islamic Jihad, the second armed Islamist movement in Gaza allied with Hamas, published a video on Thursday of a hostage identified by Israeli media as Sacha Trupanov, a 28-year-old Israeli-Russian, after first images broadcast on Tuesday.
In retaliation for the October 7 attack, Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union, and launched an offensive that reached as far as now 36,224 dead in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas administration’s Ministry of Health.
With indirect negotiations through Qatar, the United States and Egypt stalled, Hamas said Thursday it was willing to reach a truce that would include a “comprehensive agreement on an exchange” of Palestinian hostages and prisoners, but only if Israel stopped its bombings.
Israel has always refused to end its offensive until Hamas is defeated.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called for an “extended peace conference” to end the conflict, saying justice should “not be absent forever.”
After Spain, Norway and Ireland, the Slovenian Parliament must vote on Tuesday for the official recognition of the State of Palestine. Israel said on Thursday that it hoped for a “rejection” of the text which for it means “a reward for Hamas”.
