The Israeli army “continues its heavy artillery fire” on Gaza City and Jabaliya, in the north, as well as in Deir el-Balah, according to Hamas.
Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement that his group had “lost contact” with its fighters tasked with guarding five Israeli hostages, including three elderly men shown in a video released on December 18.
“We believe that these hostages were killed during one of the Zionist strikes on the Gaza Strip,” he declared without further details.
No confirmation of these statements could be obtained from the Israeli authorities. The Israeli army has also announced the death of five soldiers in Gaza since Friday.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours in incessant Israeli bombings and ground operations in the Gaza Strip, Hamas said, after a UN resolution on humanitarian aid failed to reach a resolution. call for a ceasefire.
Israeli aircraft and artillery targeted several targets from the north to the south of the territory, including the Nusseirat refugee camp (center) where a nighttime strike killed 18 people, he added.
“Executions” according to Hamas
In the town of Khan Younes, the large city in southern Gaza where clouds of smoke rise after a bombing, bodies and wounded were transported to Nasser Hospital.
Men carry away a crying woman after seeing the bodies of her loved ones, a man crouching and crying, placing his hand on a black body bag. Outside, others pray in front of a body.
In addition to the aerial bombardments, the Israeli army launched a ground offensive on October 27 in the north of the territory which allowed it to advance towards the south and take several sectors. Israel lost a total of 139 soldiers in Gaza.
On Saturday, Hamas health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidreh accused Israeli forces of having this week “committed several atrocious massacres leading to the death of dozens of people in the Jabaliya camp, in the Tal Al-Zaatar area and in the town of Jabaliya.”
“The occupying forces also executed dozens of citizens in the streets (…) Dozens of martyrs were recovered”he added.
“The occupation executed a number of them in front of their families”the Hamas government said in a statement.
Asked by AFP, the army did not specifically respond to the accusations of executions but assured that its strikes “against military targets comply with the provisions of international law”.
AFPTV images show a body under rubble in the streets of Jabaliya as well as massive destruction.
In Beit Lahia (north), civil defense reported having found “dozens of decomposing bodies”.
The army, for its part, released images showing its soldiers advancing through the ruins and opening fire on targets in the south of Gaza City. She claimed that “armed terrorists who tried to attack the soldiers were eliminated” and several “Buildings used as military sites by Hamas destroyed”.
No ceasefire
After five days of laborious negotiations, the UN Security Council adopted a text on Friday calling for the delivery “immediate” And “in large scale” aid to Gaza, where the civilian population lives in terrible conditions.
The resolution, which refrains from calling for a “ceasefire”rejected by Israel and its American ally, demands “create the conditions for a lasting cessation of hostilities”.
The real scope of this resolution is still uncertain: humanitarian aid, whose entry into Gaza is controlled by Israel, arrives in dribs and drabs from Egypt and from the Israeli border post of Kerem Shalom, but it is very far from meeting the immense needs of a population largely threatened by famine, according to the UN.
UN boss Antonio Guterres on Friday castigated the “massive obstacles” aid distribution created by the way Israel conducts its “offensive” in Gaza. Only a ceasefire can “begin to respond to the desperate needs of the population.”
In this context, the efforts of the Egyptian and Qatari mediators are continuing to try to reach a new truce which would allow greater aid to be sent, after that of a week at the end of November which also allowed the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinians detained by Israel.
But the belligerents remain intransigent.
Hamas demands a stop to the fighting before any negotiations on the hostages.
Israel is open to the idea of a truce but rules out any ceasefire before “elimination” of the Islamist movement, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel in particular.
“Hunger, famine, diseases”
In the Gaza Strip, where entire neighborhoods have been destroyed and 1.9 million of the approximately 2.4 million inhabitants displaced by the violence, “the most pressing demand is an immediate ceasefire”said WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
He recalled that “hunger, starvation and the spread of disease” widely threaten the 362 km2 territory, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are housed in makeshift camps.
“No place is safe, (there is) nowhere to go”reacted on X the director of Unrwa in Gaza, Thomas White. “People in Gaza are human beings and not pieces on a chessboard.”