Heavy fighting occurred overnight and Sunday across Gaza, including in the devastated north, as Israel pushed ahead with its offensive after the United States blocked the latest international push for a ceasefire and sent more ammunition to its close ally.
Israel has faced growing international outrage and calls for a permanent ceasefire following the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Nearly 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, where U.N. agencies say there is no safe place to flee.
The United States has again provided vital support to the offensive in recent days, vetoing United Nations Security Council efforts to end the fighting that enjoyed broad international support, and pushing for an emergency sale worth more than $100 million in tank ammunition to Israel. .
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked US President Joe Biden for “important ammunition for the continuation of the war” and for support for Israel in the Security Council.
The United States has pledged unwavering support for Israel’s goal of crushing Hamas’s military and governance capabilities and returning all hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.
The President of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks Joe Biden and the US government for the “ammunition.” AP
Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists swept into southern Israel that day, killing about 1,200 people and capturing about 240, of whom more than 100 were freed during a week-long ceasefire late last month.
In response to the attack, Israel launched an air and ground war that killed thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians, and forced some 1.9 million people to flee their homes.
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With only a small amount of aid allowed and delivery impossible in much of the territory, Palestinians face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who last week invoked a rarely used power to call for a ceasefire, said “we face a serious risk of collapse of the humanitarian system.”
The United States vetoed efforts by the United Nations Security Council to stop the fighting. AP
“The situation is rapidly deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for the Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region,” he told a forum in Qatar.
Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel’s Channel 12 television on Saturday night that the United States has not set any deadline for Israel to achieve its goals of dismantling Hamas and returning all hostages.
“The assessment that this can’t be measured in weeks is correct, and I’m not sure it can be measured in months,” he said.
FIGHTS AND ARRESTS IN THE NORTH
Palestinians continue to resist, even in the completely decimated neighborhoods of northern Gaza. AP
Israeli forces continue to face stiff resistance, including in northern Gaza, where entire neighborhoods have been leveled by airstrikes and where ground troops have been operating for more than six weeks.
Israel’s Channel 13 television broadcast images showing dozens of detainees in their underwear and with their hands raised.
Several held assault rifles above their heads, and one man could be seen slowly walking forward and placing a weapon on the ground before returning to the group.
Other videos in recent days show groups of unarmed men held in similar conditions, without clothes, tied up and blindfolded.
Detainees from another group who were released Saturday told The Associated Press that they had been beaten and denied food and water.
Israel has not commented on the latest video or allegations of mistreatment, but government spokesman Eylon Levy said “an increasing number” of Hamas fighters were surrendering and handing over their weapons, calling it a sign of “collapse” of morale.
Residents said there was still heavy fighting in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City and in the Jabaliya refugee camp, a dense urban area that houses Palestinian families who fled or were expelled from what is now Israel during the war. of 1948 that surrounded its creation.
Ambulances cannot reach some war-torn areas. AP
“They are attacking everything that moves,” said Shijaiyah resident Hamza Abu Fatouh. He said the dead and wounded were left on the streets because ambulances could no longer reach the area, where Israeli snipers and tanks had positioned themselves among abandoned buildings.
“The resistance also fights back,” he added, saying that the shooting had broken out on Saturday night.
Israel ordered the evacuation of the northern third of the territory, including Gaza City, at the start of the war, but tens of thousands of people have remained there, fearing that the south would not be safer or that they would never be allowed to return to their homes. . homes.
Heavy fighting also occurred in and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
WAITING FOR FOOD
Due to Israel’s attack, Palestinians have to wait for hours to meet their basic needs. AP
In central Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians waited for flour outside a UN distribution center. Food prices have skyrocketed as much of the territory faces severe shortages. Abdulsalam al-Majdalawi said he has come every day for almost two weeks hoping to get food for his family of seven.
“Every day we spend five or six hours here and return home (empty-handed),” he said. “Thank God they brought our name out today.”
With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The ministry does not differentiate between deaths of civilians and combatants.
The Palestinian death toll exceeds 17,000, with the majority of victims being women and children. AP
Israel blames Hamas for the civilian casualties, saying the terrorists endanger civilians by fighting in dense residential neighborhoods.
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The army says 97 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive.
Palestinian terrorists have also continued to fire rockets at Israel.
Netanyahu’s office said Sunday that Hamas still holds 117 hostages, as well as the remains of 20 people killed in captivity or during the Oct. 7 attack.
The terrorists hope to exchange them for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israel says it has provided detailed instructions for civilians to evacuate to safer areas, even as it continues to attack what it says are terrorist targets throughout the territory. Thousands of people have fled to the southern city of Rafah and other areas along the border with Egypt in recent days, one of the last areas where aid agencies can deliver food and water.
The war has raised tensions across the region, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah exchanging fire with Israel along the border and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups attacking the United States in Syria and Iraq.
Many Palestinians have tried to flee to Rafah, one of the last areas in a position to provide food and water. AP
France said one of its warships in the Red Sea shot down two drones that had approached from Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels have vowed to stop Israeli shipping through the key waterway.
Hanegbi said Israel has asked its Western allies to address the threat and will give them “some time” to organize a response. But he said that if threats persist, “we will act to remove this blockade.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn