Israel bombs Gaza as UN warns civilians face ‘grave peril’

AFP | Gaza

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Israeli forces yesterday heavily bombed besieged Gaza as the centre of fierce combat against Hamas moves steadily south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

The war that started with the Hamas attack of October 7 has devastated much of northern Gaza, while air and artillery strikes and house-to-house fighting have been heaviest in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The Israeli army has deployed an additional brigade to Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, said army spokesman Daniel Hagari.

More than 80 percent’s of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been driven from their homes, and many now live in cramped shelters or makeshift tents in the far south, in and around the city of Rafah near Egypt.

UN World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for “urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril” facing Gaza’s people, including “terrible injuries, acute hunger and... severe risk of disease”.

French President Emmanuel Macron in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced his “deepest concern at the very heavy civilian toll” and stressed “the need to work towards a lasting ceasefire”, Macron’s office said.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its bloody October 7 attack, which left about 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The Hamas gunmen also took around 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in captivity -- a source of intense grief and anxiety for their families who have held protests demanding urgent action to “bring them home”.

Israel’s relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion with troops and tanks have killed at least 21,110 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israeli army says 167 of its soldiers have been killed in the war in Gaza.

 Quadruplets born in war Amid the conflict, an Israeli siege has deprived Gazans of food, water, fuel and medicine -- the severe shortages only sporadically eased by convoys of humanitarian aid trucks.

One of the many people displaced, young mother Iman al-Masry, recently gave birth to quadruplets in a hospital in southern Gaza after fleeing her family’s home in the devastated north.

The arduous journey “affected my pregnancy”, the 28-year-old said, recounting that she gave birth by C-section on December 18 to two girls and two boys, one of whom was too fragile to leave hospital.

“They are very slim,” she said of the three other infants, speaking in a cramped schoolroom turned shelter in Deir al-Balah.

“It’s cold and windy and there’s no bathtub ... I just use wipes.”

“There’s no nutritious food I can eat to breastfeed the three babies.”

Violence has also flared across the Israel-occupied West Bank, with at least 314 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Israeli forces made a deadly overnight raid into Ramallah, health officials said yesterday as troops raided money exchange shops which the military said had provided funds for armed groups.

An AFP journalist saw Palestinians hurl Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces, who killed one man according to the health ministry