Gaza emergency services reported on Sunday at least 23 dead in Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory, where the army claims to have targeted around a hundred “terrorist targets” despite the resumption of negotiations for a truce in the strip. from Gaza.
Posted at 8:27 a.m.
Updated at 10:14 a.m.
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 the Gaza Strip.
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.
PHOTO MENAHEM KAHANA, AGENCY FRANCE-PRESSE
Smoke rises above buildings destroyed in the northern Gaza Strip during an Israeli army bombardment, January 5, 2025.
“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.”
Several other Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, in the north, center and south, caused 12 additional casualties, local emergency services said.
Warning to Hezbollah
“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” in the space of two days, Friday and Saturday, in Gaza.
She also claimed to have “eliminated” a commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, Saed Saeed Zaki Dahnoun, who participated in the attack of October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil, at the origin of the war.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened on Wednesday to intensify strikes on Gaza if Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israel, which said it had been targeted almost daily for more than a week.
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The minister argued that Hezbollah fighters had still not withdrawn north of the Litani River, in southern Lebanon, around thirty kilometers from the border, and that this could represent a danger for the Israeli population.
PHOTO DAWOUD ABU ALKAS, REUTERS
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Gaza City on January 5, 2025.
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.
“Slim hopes”
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.
“We have hopes, they are slim, that an agreement can be found between Israel and Hamas,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot declared on Sunday on RTL radio. “We continue to exert the pressure necessary to make this happen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t just depend on us.”
Among the main sticking points so far have been the permanent nature or not of a ceasefire and the governance of Gaza after the war, Israel categorically opposing Hamas being able to rule the territory again.
This new round of exchanges in Qatar comes just over two weeks before the inauguration, on January 20, of American President-elect Donald Trump, who has already put pressure on the Palestinian movement.
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, have been killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in Gaza, according to the latest report on Sunday from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
