Israel kills nearly 200 Gazans in 24 hours
The Gaza Strip’s health ministry said Wednesday death toll in the Palestinian territory surged above 21,000 after Israel killed nearly 200 people in just 24 hours.
Israel again pounded Gaza with air strikes and shelling after its armed forces chief warned the war raging with Hamas since the October 7 attacks will last “many more months”.
Explosion lit up the sky over the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis – a focus of heavy urban combat since the Israeli army said it had largely gained operational control over Gaza’s north.
Heavy firefights however also raged again around Gaza City in the north, while an air strike wounded 11 near Rafah, a far-southern city crowded with internally displaced people, witnesses said.
Gaza’s spiraling humanitarian crisis has amplified calls for an end to the hostilities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to keep up the campaign to destroy Hamas.
“This war’s objectives are essential and not simple to achieve,” armed forces chief Herzi Halevi said Tuesday. “Therefore, the war will continue for many more months.”
The campaign has killed at least 21,110 people, according to the latest toll issued by Gaza’s health ministry, which added that more than 55,000 people had been wounded.
The Israeli army said the number of Israeli soldiers killed inside Gaza had risen to 164.
Gaza’s 2.4 million people have suffered severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicines, with only limited aid entering the territory.
An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN.
The Gaza war “goes beyond a catastrophe and a genocide,” Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas charged in an interview on Egyptian television.
The Palestinian Authority chief argued the war “is much uglier than what happened” during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation when 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.
“Netanyahu’s plan is to get rid of the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority,” Abbas said.
The UN Security Council, in a resolution last week, called for the “safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale”.
The resolution, which did not call for an immediate end to the fighting, effectively leaves Israel with operational oversight of aid deliveries.
In Rafah, hundreds turned up at the Abdul Salam Yassin water company carrying baskets, pulling handcarts and even pushing a wheelchair stacked with bottles to queue for clean water.
Violence has also flared across the occupied West Bank, with more than 310 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops or settlers, according to the territory’s health ministry.
An Israeli operation in a refugee camp in the north of the West Bank left six people dead early Wednesday, it said.
Israel also said it will not renew the visa of a United Nations staff member and will also deny the visa request of another UN employee as the regime yet again expresses its displeasure of the global body, which has criticized Israel’s targeting of civilians and hospitals. An overwhelming majority of the more than 20,000 Palestinians killed are civilians.
“We will no longer remain silent in the face of the UN’s hypocrisy!” Eli Cohen, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, posted on X on Monday. Israel has accused the UN of being biased.