Israel bombs south Gaza after Hamas hostage threat
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Months of intense bombardment and clashes have left Gaza’s health system on the brink of collapse and nearly two million people displaced.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories – Israel bombed southern Gaza’s main city, Khan Younis, on Dec 11 after the militant group Hamas warned that no Israeli hostages would leave the territory alive unless its demands for prisoner releases were met.
Witnesses reported more bombs raining down on Khan Younis, even as deadly fighting was also seen in the central and northern parts of the enclave.
Air strikes also hit Rafah city in the far south, said Ms Umm Mohammed al Jabri, 56, who lost seven children in the bombardment.
“Everything is gone,” she said. “I have four children left out of 11. Last night, they bombed the house we were in and destroyed it. They said Rafah would be a safe place. There is no safe place.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Hamas to “surrender now” after his national security adviser claimed the army had already killed some 7,000 Hamas fighters.
“It is the beginning of the end of Hamas. I say to the Hamas terrorists: It is over. Don’t die for (Yahya) Sinwar,” he said on Dec 10, referring to Hamas’ chief in Gaza.
Hamas triggered the conflict with the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on Oct 7
Israel said some 137 hostages remained in Gaza after a week-long ceasefire late in November saw dozens of captives exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas on Dec 10 warned that Israel would not receive “their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance”, including the release of more prisoners from Israeli jails.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry said dozens more people were killed on Dec 11, adding to its latest death toll of 17,997, mostly women and children, in the war that is now in its third month.
The war and siege have taken a heavy toll on basic services, especially healthcare, with only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity, according to the United Nations humanitarian agency Ocha.
“Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” said World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Most hospitals were no longer functioning.
Journalists visited the bombed-out ruins of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City
“Our life has become a living hell. There is no electricity, no water, no flour, no bread, no medicine for the children who are all sick,” said Mr Mohammed Daloul, 38, who fled there with his wife and three children.
Catastrophic situation
Yazan Fasfous, 13, helping to distribute medical supplies at the European Gaza Hospital where his mother works, in Khan Younis, on Dec 8.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The UN General Assembly was set to meet on Dec 12 to discuss the dire situation in Gaza, its president said, after the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution for a ceasefir
A draft of the text seen by AFP closely follows the language of the failed resolution, “expressing grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip”.
The UN estimates that 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people – roughly half of them children – have been displaced by the war and intense bombing campaign that has reduced vast areas to rubble.
Israel has been urging civilians to seek refuge in Gaza’s far south, but the army has kept striking targets throughout the territory, leading to UN warnings that there is no safe place left in Gaza.
The army has published complex maps that break up Gaza into dozens of ostensibly safe and unsafe areas, but Palestinians say these are confusing and hard to access amid power and telecommunications outages.
Ms Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, condemned the mapping software as inadequate.
“A unilateral declaration by an occupying power that patches of land where there is no infrastructure, food, water, healthcare or hygiene are ‘safe zones’ does not mean they are safe,” she said.
UN ‘severely undermined
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a leaders’ gathering in Qatar on Dec 10 that the Security Council’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined” by the US veto.
“I can promise I will not give up,” Mr Guterres said.
Qatar, where Hamas’ top leadership is based, said it was still working on a new truce.
But Israel’s relentless bombardment was “narrowing the window” for success, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Dec 10 again rejected a ceasefire.
“With Hamas still alive, still intact and... with the stated intent of repeating Oct 7 again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem,” he told ABC News.
Yafa Hospital, damaged by Israeli strikes, in the central Gaza Strip on Dec 8.
PHOTO: REUTERS
But Mr Blinken also said the US was “deeply, deeply aware of the terrible human toll that this conflict is taking on innocent men, women and children”.
The war has heightened fears that the conflict will expand between Israel and its US allies on the one hand, and Iran-backed armed groups on the other, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Pro-Iran groups have launched attacks against US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria, and Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have threatened to attack any vessels heading to Israel unless more aid is allowed into Gaza.
Israeli strikes overnight near Damascus killed two Hezbollah fighters and two Syrians working with the Lebanese group, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. France said on Dec 10 that one of its frigates in the Red Sea had shot down two drones launched from Yemen. AFP
