Hamas says Israeli strikes killed hostages

AFP | Khan Yunis                                                     

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Hamas said yesterday Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed almost 50 of the hostages as the United Nations warned “nowhere is safe” in the territory.

The group’s armed wing made the claim after Israel sent tanks, troops and armoured bulldozers into the enclave in a “targeted raid” overnight that the military said destroyed multiple sites before withdrawing.

“(Ezzedine) Al-Qassam Brigades estimates that the number of Zionist prisoners who were killed in the Gaza Strip as a result of Zionist strikes and massacres has reached almost 50,” the group said in a statement on its Telegram channel.

Hamas’s shock October 7 attacks, the worst in Israeli history, saw throngs of Hamas gunmen pour from Gaza into Israel, killing more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 224 more, according to official tallies.

Israel has retaliated with relentless strikes that Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said have killed more than 7,000 people, also mainly civilians -- a toll expected to rise substantially if Israeli troops massed near the border thrust across.

On the 20th day of Israel’s bloodiest Gaza war yet, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Lynne Hastings, said that despite the Israeli military issuing warnings to people in Gaza City to leave, “advance warnings make no difference”.

She said in a statement that when evacuation routes are bombed, “people are left with nothing but impossible choices. Nowhere is safe in Gaza.” The army said overnight its forces hit “numerous cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts”.

Black smoke billowed into the sky after a blast in the grainy night-vision footage the Israeli military released hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared preparations for a ground war were under way. The operation in northern Gaza came in “preparation for the next stages of combat”, the military said.

The black-and-white video showed armoured vehicles moving near Gaza’s border fence. Other footage appeared to show an air strike and buildings being targeted. The raid came after Netanyahu delivered a nationally televised address to Israelis still grieving and furious after the October 7 attacks, telling them “we are in the midst of a campaign for our existence”.

International alarm has increased amid growing shock about the scale of human suffering inside the besieged Palestinian territory where Israel has cut off most water, food, fuel and other basic supplies.

Surging death toll

The war’s surging death toll is by far the highest since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the small coastal territory in 2005 -- a period that has seen four previous Gaza wars.

Entire neighbourhoods have been razed, surgeons are operating without anaesthetic, and ice-cream trucks have become makeshift morgues. In chaotic scenes, volunteers and neighbours have clawed, sometimes with their bare hands, through shattered concrete and sand to pull out civilian casualties.

All too often they recover only corpses which have piled up, wrapped in bloodstained white shrouds. In Brussels yesterday, European Union leaders debated calling for “pauses” in the war so aid can get in.

The 27-nation bloc has long been split between more pro-Palestinian members such as Ireland and Spain, and staunch backers of Israel including Germany and Austria. “What we want is the killing and the violence to stop so that humanitarian aid can get into Gaza, where innocent Palestinian people are suffering, and also to allow us to get EU citizens out,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.