Israeli tanks are massed on Tuesday at the gates of the main hospital in Gaza, considered a strategic Hamas hideout, with Joe Biden however calling on Israel to exercise restraint to protect the thousands of people stuck there. In parallel with these tensions around the al-Chifa hospital in Gaza, the Israeli army confirmed on Tuesday the identity of a soldier hostage from Hamas, after the publication by the Palestinian armed movement of a video showing the young woman in captivity.
“Our hearts go out to the Marciano family, whose daughter, Noa, was brutally kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist organization,” said the army, which thus confirms for the first time the identity of one of the few 240 people taken hostage and taken to the Gaza Strip during the bloody Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7.
The broadcast of this video comes at a time when Hamas accuses Israel of “procrastinating” in discussions, via mediation from Qatar, relating to the possible release of dozens of hostages in exchange for a truce. Israel “demanded the release of 100 (hostages), we informed the mediation that we could release the hostages if we obtained five days of truce – that is to say a ceasefire and the passage of aid to all of our people throughout the Gaza Strip – but the enemy is procrastinating,” said Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the possibility of an agreement to release hostages, a condition according to him for any ceasefire. Family members of hostages planned a march from Tel Aviv to the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on Tuesday to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to favor their release.
The main information:
– Joe Biden, President of the United States, calls on Israel to exercise restraint as fighting continues around Gaza’s main hotel, Al-Shifa.
– The Israeli army confirmed Tuesday the identity of a female soldier held hostage by Hamas.
– Hamas accuses Israel of “procrastinating” in discussions, via mediation from Qatar, concerning the possible release of dozens of hostages in exchange for a truce.
– Family members of hostages planned a march from Tel Aviv to the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on Tuesday to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to favor their release.
– Around 10,000 Palestinians (patients, staff, people displaced by the fighting) are crowded into the Al-Chifa hospital site according to the UN
“Protect” al-Shifa
According to the UN, around 10,000 Palestinians (patients, staff, people displaced by the fighting) are crowded onto the hospital site, or even more according to local officials. “The situation is very serious, it’s inhumane,” warned Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on X (formerly Twitter). In this context, “I hope and expect less intrusive actions regarding the hospital” Al-Chifa, declared, at the White House, the American president whose country is a key ally of Israel in its offensive against Hamas. And added: “the hospital must be protected”.
For days, clashes between Hamas members and Israeli soldiers have been concentrated around al-Chifa, with the Israeli army accusing the Palestinian Islamist movement of having installed its infrastructure in a network of tunnels under the hospital and using the sick and displaced as “human shields”. “The idea is to try to evacuate people, to evacuate as many as possible” from the hospital site, said an Israeli army spokesperson, Peter, on the night of Monday to Tuesday. Lerner.
“We have no electricity, no food, no water in the hospital,” said an MSF doctor. “People will die in a few hours without working artificial respirators,” he added, with the army reporting “efforts” to transfer incubators from an Israeli hospital to al-Chifa. The Hamas government’s deputy health minister, Youssef Abou Rich, told AFP on Monday that “seven premature babies” and “27 patients in intensive care” had died since Saturday due to the lack of electricity in this area. hospital.
“Control of Gaza”
Israel has been relentlessly striking the Gaza Strip since the attack launched on its soil by Hamas commandos on October 7, and has been carrying out a ground operation since October 27 with the aim of “annihilating” Hamas, in power there.
On the Israeli side, around 1,200 people were killed, according to the authorities, the vast majority civilians killed on the day of the attack, of unprecedented scale and violence since the creation of Israel in 1948. At the beginning On the 39th day of the war, Israeli bombardments on Gaza killed a total of 11,240 people, mostly civilians, including 4,630 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The army announced that it “continued to carry out raids, targeting terrorist infrastructures installed in government buildings, in the heart of the civilian population, including in schools, universities, mosques”.
Smoke emerged from the Martyrs Mosque in the center of Gaza City on Monday, while alarms sounded in the deserted streets, according to images shot by AFP. Hamas has “lost control in Gaza” and its fighters are “fleeing towards the south” of the territory, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday. According to the UN, about 1.6 million of the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war.
In Bureij, in the center of the Gaza Strip, families from the north continued to flee on foot or massed on carts. “The destruction is everywhere”, “even the birds have lost their lives”, testified Monday a Palestinian, Adel Shamallakh.
Lebanon, West Bank, Egypt
During the night from Monday to Tuesday, new exchanges of fire took place between the Israeli army and armed groups in Lebanon, including the powerful pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which supports Hamas. “Following fire from Lebanon towards Israel on Monday evening, Israeli army combat jets struck infrastructure” of Hezbollah in Lebanon, including “command centers,” the Israeli army said in a statement. .
An Al-Jazeera journalist was slightly injured by Israeli fire, according to the Qatari channel and a local official, while he and other press correspondents were covering the bombings in southern Lebanon. According to a hospital source, five Palestinians aged in their twenties were killed during nighttime clashes with Israeli forces in the Tulkarem sector, in the north of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian territory which has seen an upsurge in violence on the sidelines of the war between Israel and Hamas in and around Gaza.
In Gaza, international aid is arriving slowly from Egypt, in very insufficient quantity according to the UN, while more than 550 foreign and dual nationals were able to leave Gaza on Monday, according to Palestinian services.