The Israeli army expands its operations in the Gaza Strip on Monday, where the death toll among Palestinian civilians is increasing, with new signs of a conflict spreading across the region with incidents this weekend. in Iraq and the Red Sea. “The Israeli army continues to expand its ground operation against Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip. The army operates wherever Hamas has strongholds,” its spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, said late Sunday evening. .
Information to remember:
- The Israeli army expands its operations in the Gaza Strip on Monday.
- Israel accuses Hamas of installing infrastructure in or under hospitals and using civilians as human shields.
- The IDF reported five soldiers killed on Monday, including three on Sunday, since fighting resumed on Friday.
- Early Monday, the Israeli army also launched operations in different sectors of the West Bank.
According to Washington, Hamas did not want female hostages to speak
Efforts to extend a “pause” in fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza failed in part because Hamas did not want female hostages to reveal what they had suffered, a US official said Monday.
Israel had stopped its offensive in Gaza as part of an agreement negotiated under the aegis of Qatar and the United States providing for the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its bloody attack on Israeli soil on October 7. Israeli authorities said Friday they were resuming their military offensive because Hamas had not released all the female hostages.
US asks Israel to let more fuel into Gaza
The United States on Monday called on its Israeli ally to let more fuel into the Gaza Strip after a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed on Friday.
“Early Friday, the Israeli government was not allowing fuel to enter” Gaza, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters, as the besieged Palestinian territory faces food shortages , water and fuel.
“We’ve had very frank conversations with them about the need to see fuel coming in (into the territory) and we saw fuel coming in on Friday,” he said.
A Senate delegation around Gérard Larcher in Israel at the end of December
The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, accompanied by a delegation of parliamentarians of all political persuasions, will visit Israel the penultimate week of December, we learned Monday from the Senate Presidency, confirming information of the Parisian.
The precise program for this visit, against the backdrop of the war between Israel and Hamas, has not yet been established, but “all the presidents of parliamentary groups” in the Senate have been invited by Gérard Larcher, the presidency said.
This trip will take place the week of December 18, it was also specified. Several parliamentary sources have put forward a visit from December 19 to 22, confirming the dates put forward by Le Parisien. The same sources explained that a visit to Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered, in the occupied West Bank, was planned during this visit.
Israeli army says it is acting “forcefully” in Khan Younes, southern Gaza
The Israeli army said on Monday it was acting “with force” around the town of Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, subject to intense bombardment and near which its tanks began to enter. Engaged since October 27 in a ground offensive in the north of the small territory, the Israeli army has now claimed to extend its ground operations against Hamas “throughout the entire Gaza Strip”. On Monday, witnesses told AFP that dozens of Israeli tanks, troop transports and bulldozers had entered Gaza, near Khan Younes, close to the border with Egypt.
Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields
Israeli soldiers have been engaged in a ground offensive since October 27 in northern Gaza, where they have taken control of several sectors. Since fighting resumed Friday following the expiration of a week-long truce with Hamas, the army had mainly focused on air raids. During the night, a strike on an entrance to the Kamal Adwan hospital, located in the north of Gaza, left several dead according to the Palestinian agency Wafa, with Hamas accusing the Israeli army in a statement of a “serious violation ” of international humanitarian law.
Contacted by AFP to find out if it had bombed the perimeter of this hospital, the Israeli army did not respond immediately. Israel accuses Hamas of installing infrastructure in or under hospitals and using civilians as human shields.
The Hamas Health Ministry said Monday that 15,899 people, 70% of them women and children, have been killed since the start of Israeli bombardments on the Gaza Strip, carried out in response to the bloody October 7 attack. of Hamas against Israel. “During the past hours, only 316 dead and 664 injured were able to be taken out of the rubble and brought to hospitals, but many others are still under the rubble,” said Hamas Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf. al-Qidreh, a toll that has increased since the end of the truce.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas
In Israel, the attack launched by Hamas commandos on October 7 left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians, according to the authorities. In response, Israel declared war on Hamas and promised to destroy this entity in power since 2007 in Gaza. The army reported on Monday five soldiers killed, including three on Sunday, since fighting resumed on Friday.
Since the start of the war, the Israeli army has carried out “around 10,000 airstrikes”, she said on Sunday. In the south of the Gaza Strip, strikes have targeted massively since Friday the large city of Khan Younes and its surroundings, where every day now the army warns in leaflets dropped on certain neighborhoods that a “terrible attack is imminent.” , and orders the inhabitants to leave.
Hospitals in southern Gaza Strip overwhelmed by influx of wounded
On Sunday, residents fled the city, on foot, piled into carts or by car, their belongings piled on the roof, according to AFP images. Hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip are overwhelmed by the influx of wounded while the fuel reserves to run the generators are almost dry. At the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, the largest in southern Gaza, new wounded and new bodies, sometimes with no one to identify them, flock to each explosion.
On the spot, Ehab al-Najjar, a nearby resident, let his anger explode. “I went home and saw the bomb fall on our house,” he told AFP, describing bodies in the street. “Half were young children. What was their fault? (…) Don’t they feel sorry?” “Words fail me to describe the horrors that are hitting the children here,” James Elder, a Unicef spokesperson present at Nasser hospital, said in a video on Sunday. “I see children arriving en masse among the victims,” he declared earlier on X.
In the nearby town of Rafah, residents stomping through rubble gathered around a huge crater. “It’s an extraordinary bombardment. We don’t know why. We don’t know for what purpose,” exclaimed one of them, Mohammad Fahjan.
The Israeli army launched operations in different sectors of the West Bank
Visiting reservists, Israeli Chief of Staff General Herzi Halevi said the army was continuing its operations in the southern Gaza Strip “with as much force and as much results” as it had done so in the north, in a video released on Sunday by the army.
Early Monday, the Israeli army also launched operations in different sectors of the West Bank, notably in Jenin, where around thirty military vehicles are deployed, according to the Palestinian Wafa agency.
US warns Israel against increasing civilian casualties
Without calling into question the right of their ally “to defend itself” against Hamas, the United States warned Israel against the increase in civilian victims. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” Vice-President Kamala Harris insisted this weekend, alarmed by “devastating” images from Gaza and calling on Israel to “do more to protect innocent civilians.”
The Israel/Hamas war also has consequences for the United States, which has noted an increase in attacks against its soldiers, bases or allies in the Middle East except during the one-week truce, from November 24 to December 1.