by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Bassam Masoud and Emily Rose
CAIRO/GAZA/JERUSALEM, Dec 25 (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday to continue the fight against Hamas fighters, after Palestinian health authorities said more than 100 people had been killed in overnight by Israeli airstrikes.
Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip, a few hours after one of the deadliest nights of the conflict.
Israel is under pressure from its closest ally, the United States, to move to a lower-intensity offensive phase and reduce the number of civilian casualties.
Benjamin Netanyahu, however, told members of his Likud party that the war was far from over, rejecting what he said was media speculation that his government might decide to halt the fighting. .
He said Israel would not be able to free the remaining hostages without applying military pressure.
“We will not stop. The war will continue until the end, until we end it, no less,” Benjamin Netanyahu said during his trip to Gaza.
Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry spokesman says at least 70 people killed in airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza .
Ibrahim Youssef said his wife and four children, including a four-month-old baby, were trapped under the rubble of the house they were in in Maghazi.
“What had they done wrong? he asked. “Were there resistance fighters here?”
The strikes, which began a few hours before midnight, continued on Monday. Palestinian media reported that Israel had intensified its bombing in the central Gaza Strip.
Health officials said eight people were killed when Israeli planes and tanks carried out strikes on homes and roads in the towns of Boureij and Nousseirat.
Emergency services said an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip killed 23 people.
The Israeli military said it was studying a report on an incident in Maghazi and was committed to minimizing civilian suffering.
Israel says Hamas operates in densely populated areas and uses civilians as human shields, which the Palestinian group denies.
CANCELLATION OF CELEBRATIONS IN BETHLEHEM
Celebrations were canceled in Bethlehem, a town in the occupied West Bank where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was born in a stable 2,000 years ago.
Palestinian Christians held a candlelight Christmas vigil in Bethlehem, singing hymns and reciting prayers calling for peace in the Gaza Strip.
No Christmas trees were erected on Nativity Square. In churches, Nativity figures were placed among the rubble and barbed wire as a sign of solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Pope Francis lamented that Jesus’ message of peace was drowned out in the “futile logic of war” in the very land where he was born.
In his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) Christmas speech, the pontiff also described the October 7 attack on Israel as “abominable” and launched a new call for the release of around a hundred hostages held in Gaza.
STRIKE IN SYRIA
Three security sources said an Israeli airstrike outside the Syrian capital Damascus killed an Iranian Revolutionary Guard adviser on Monday.
The sources told Reuters that the adviser, known as Sayyed Razi Mousavi, was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.
In a statement read on official Iranian television, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards force said Israel “will pay for this crime.”
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Bassam Masoud in Gaza, Dan Williams in Jerusalem, with contributions from Philip Pullella in Rome, Nafisa Eltahir in Cairo and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington, writing by Michael Georgy, Hugh Lawson and Matt Spetalnick; version French Camille Raynaud)
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