Israel continues bombing Gaza after 100 days of war: 23,968 dead

Israel continues bombing the Gaza Strip this Sunday, where The war against the Palestinian movement Hamas turns 100 days old, plunging the population into a serious humanitarian crisis and raising fears of a regional conflict..

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“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the 'Axis of Evil,' not anyone,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday, referring to genocide accusations before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), based in in The Hague, brought by South Africa.

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Israel also faces attacks on its northern border by the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah, which It is part of Iran's “axis of resistance” and includes armed groups hostile to Israel and the United States..

The war broke out on October 7 when Hamas militants attacked Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli data.

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About 250 people were taken hostage during the attack, according to Israeli authorities. One hundred were freed thanks to a truce in November, and relatives of those still captive maintain pressure for their release..

To date, some 136 people remain kidnapped in the Gaza Strip at the hands of Hamas, an excessively long wait that the Israeli Government must put an end to, their families and friends demand in a massive demonstration that has been taking place since the night of this Saturday in Tel Aviv and will last 24 hours.

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In retaliation for the attack, Israel promised to “annihilate” Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

At least 125 Gazans were killed in the last 24 hours by Israeli shelling and airstrikes against residential targets, increasing the death toll in the Strip reaches 23,968, mainly women, adolescents and childrenaccording to the latest balance sheet from the Hamas Ministry of Health.

Furthermore, in the last few hours, another 265 Gazans were injured, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health in the enclave, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, bringing the total to 60,582 injured since October 7.

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“The Israeli occupation has committed more than 2,000 massacres against Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip,” said Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qedra in a statement today.

On the diplomatic front, the foreign ministers of China and Egypt, meeting in Cairo, called this Sunday for a ceasefire and the creation of an “independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The most recent attacks

The deadliest attack in the last 24 hours took place in the Al-Draj residential neighborhood of Gaza City, where 50 bodies were recovered from the rubble after the bombing of a three-story residential building, the official Palestinian agency Wafa reported..

In the center and east of the city of Khan Yunis, more than 30 civilians were killed in airstrikes on their homes, and women and children were taken to the European and Kamal Nasser hospitals.

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Also in the city of Rafah, which covers an area supposedly safe for more than a million people, many of them displaced, another 23 people died, Wafa said, after two homes and a vehicle were attacked.

Furthermore, for the third consecutive day, Communications and Internet services remain down, in part, due to lack of fuel and massive destruction of infrastructure in the Strip..

Two workers from the Paltel company, the largest mobile and internet service provider in Gaza, died this Saturday while carrying out repair operations, the company confirmed.

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“Two of our colleagues were killed while working on repairing the communications network in Khan Yunis, where the company vehicle was directly attacked with a projectile,” the company said in a statement, lamenting a total of 13 deaths among your employees.

The Health spokesperson also reported the death of 337 members of the medical staff, as well as the destruction of 121 ambulances, and specified that 30 hospitals and 53 health centers had been out of service after 100 days of offensive.

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70% of the victims of the war in Gaza are civilians and, among them, there are at least 10,000 dead minors. In addition, it is estimated that some 8,000 bodies remain trapped under the rubble.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army says it is concentrating its operations against Hamas in Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are gathered who fled massive bombings in the north at the beginning of the war. The army also announced the death of one soldier, bringing to 188 the number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations in Gaza on October 27.

The Israeli blockade of the Strip, reinforced by the war, is causing serious shortages of food and fuel.

“The mass death, destruction, displacement, hunger, loss and pain of a hundred days of war in Gaza stain our common humanity,” said the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini. , on a visit to the territory.

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The UN estimates that 1.9 million people, or almost 85% of the population, have had to leave their homes. Many seek refuge in the south of the territory although the Gaza Ministry of Health has repeatedly warned that there is no infrastructure to accommodate them.

Outside Gaza, US attacks on Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels raise fears of regional spread to the conflict.

The Houthis are increasing attacks in the Red Sea against ships they consider linked to Israel, to which the United States responded with attacks on rebel installations in Yemen.

On Israel's border with Lebanon, exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been almost daily since October 7.

And in the occupied West Bank, where violence has been increasing since October 7, the Israeli army reported the arrest for “incitement to terrorism” of two sisters of Hamas number two, Saleh Al Aruri, who died on January 2 in Lebanon in a drone attack attributed to the Israeli army.

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Three gunmen and an Israeli die on the Israel-Lebanon border

The Israeli army stated that killed “three terrorists” who infiltrated Israel from Lebanon in a border area where a missile killed an Israeli this Sunday. During a patrol “in the Har Dov sector,” Israeli soldiers “detected a terrorist cell that entered Israeli territory from Lebanon and opened fire” on them, the armed force said in a statement.

In response, Israeli soldiers killed “three terrorists,” the army added. Five soldiers were wounded, he said.

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Har Dov is the Israeli name for Shebaa Farms, a disputed border area.

The Lebanese Hezbollah movement, for its part, indicated that it had launched this Sunday six attacks against Israel. One of them reached the Israeli town of Kfar Yuval, on the border with Lebanon..

A man died in that town after an anti-tank missile hit a house, the Israeli army and emergency services reported.

The Israeli air forces bombed “Hezbollah positions” on Sunday, according to the army, which warned that it “will continue to defend its borders against any threat.”

INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL
*With information from AFP and EFE