Gaza deaths top 25,000 as Israel pushes offensive
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Israel is pressing its push against Hamas in southern Gaza as it seeks to destroy the armed group.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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GAZA STRIP - Gaza’s Health Ministry on Jan 21 said the death toll in the war-torn Palestinian territory breached 25,000 as Israel pushed its southward offensive and renewed bombardment in the north.
Israel is pressing its push against Hamas in southern Gaza as it seeks to destroy the armed group responsible for an attack on the country on Oct 7.
In early January, Israel’s military said the Hamas command structure in northern Gaza had been dismantled, leaving only isolated fighters.
But witnesses told AFP that Israeli boats were bombarding Gaza City and other areas in the north early on Jan 21. Hamas has also reported heavy combat in the north.
“Dozens are still under the rubble,” the Hamas government’s media office said, adding that the dead and injured “could not be transferred to hospitals due to the continued artillery shelling on... Khan Younis and the Tal al-Hawa area in Gaza City and the north”.
The Israeli army said it “eliminated a number of terrorists” in the main southern city of Khan Younis and killed 15 militants in northern Gaza over the past day.
Thick plumes of smoke billowed above Khan Younis on the morning of Jan 21, AFP journalists saw.
The Oct 7 attacks by Hamas resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 25,105 people in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
‘Difficult conditions’ in tunnel
The gunmen also seized about 250 hostages during the October attacks.
Israel says around 132 remain in Gaza, of whom at least 27 captives are believed to have been killed, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
In a briefing on the evening of Jan 20, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said troops found a tunnel in Khan Younis where some hostages had been kept.
Among the evidence of their presence were paintings, including by a five-year-old captive, he said.
“About 20 hostages” had been held there at different times “in difficult conditions without daylight... with little oxygen and terrible humidity”.
Soldiers entered the tunnel and fought a battle with militants in which “the terrorists were eliminated”, Rear-Admiral Hagari said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under intense pressure to return the hostages and account for security failings surrounding the October attacks.
Thousands protested across Israel on the evening of Jan 20 to demand the release of the hostages and early elections to oust Mr Netanyahu.
Mr Avi Lulu Shamriz, the father of Mr Alon Shamriz, a hostage mistakenly killed by Israeli troops earlier in the war, told AFP in Tel Aviv that Mr Netanyahu’s war Cabinet was heading for disaster.
“The way we’re going, all the hostages are going to die. It’s not too late to free them.”
Devastating West Bank raid
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees says about 1.7 million people have been displaced in Gaza, with about one million crowded into the Rafah area.
UN agencies have warned that better aid access is needed urgently as famine and disease loom.
Diplomatic efforts have sought to secure scaled-up aid deliveries for Gaza and a truce, after a week-long cessation of hostilities in November
Hamas’ Qatar-based chief Ismail Haniyeh was in Turkey on Jan 20 for talks with the Foreign Minister, diplomatic sources said, renewing ties with the key regional power which asked the group’s leaders to leave the country following the October attacks.
Meanwhile, violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since Oct 7.
The Israeli military said it demolished two houses in Hebron belonging to two Palestinian gunmen who carried out an attack on a road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem in November.
An AFP journalist saw a fireball erupt and smoke billowing from a home on Jan 21 as Israeli armoured vehicles manoeuvred through Hebron’s roads during the raid.
Palestinians gathered outside the crumpled remains of one of the homes on Jan 21, with young boys weaving their way through a thicket of tangled metal and rubble.
One man removed a banner that Israeli forces had attached to a destroyed house which read: “Terrorism has no home.”
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters in a village south of Jenin and the towns of Arura and Qalqilya.
Rising tensions and violence across the Middle East
Iranian media said an Israeli strike on Damascus on Jan 20 killed the Revolutionary Guards’ spy chief in Syria
