Keystone-SDA
Gaza’s emergency services reported at least 23 deaths on Sunday in Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory, where the IDF claims to have targeted around a hundred “terrorist targets” despite the resumption of negotiations for a truce in Gaza.
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January 5, 2025 – 4:05 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) Indirect discussions between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas have just resumed in Qatar with a view to a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza.
While waiting for a possible agreement, violence has escalated for several days in the Palestinian enclave besieged and devastated by nearly 15 months of war.
At least 11 people, including children and women, were killed in a dawn airstrike on a house in northern Gaza, according to Gaza Civil Defense.
“Rescuers are still looking for five people trapped under the rubble,” said Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal. “They work with their bare hands because they do not have the appropriate equipment.”
88 deaths in 24 hours
Several other Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, in the north, center and south, caused 12 additional casualties, local emergency services said.
According to data from the Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza, deemed reliable by the UN, at least 88 people were killed there in the space of 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday.
“The (Israeli) occupation is using the false pretext of the presence of fighters to carry out violent airstrikes on homes housing dozens of displaced people,” denounced Mahmoud Bassal.
The Israeli army announced that it had “hit more than 100 terrorist targets” and “eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists” on Friday and Saturday in Gaza.
It also claimed to have hit several sites used by Palestinian fighters to fire projectiles towards Israel in recent days.
Warning to Hezbollah
Israel says it has been targeted almost daily for more than a week, even if the shots are less frequent than at the start of the war, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened on Wednesday to intensify strikes on Gaza if Hamas continued to fire rockets.
On Sunday, on another front, he accused Lebanese Hezbollah of not respecting the terms of the ceasefire agreement which entered into force on November 27, and warned that his country could be “forced to act”.
The minister argued that Hezbollah fighters had still not withdrawn north of the Litani River, in southern Lebanon, around thirty kilometers from the border, and that this could represent a danger for the Israeli population.
Since the start of the ceasefire, the two camps have accused each other of repeated violations. Hezbollah Secretary General Naïm Qassem warned on Saturday that his movement was ready to respond if Israel continued to violate the agreement.
Negotiations
In Doha, nothing is filtering out for the moment from the ongoing discussions concerning the Gaza Strip, where no truce has been concluded since that of a week at the end of November 2023, despite the diplomatic efforts carried out under the aegis of the Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas attack 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.
At least 45,805 people, mainly civilians, were killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in Gaza, according to the latest report on Sunday from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
