Terrorist Israel continues genocide in Gaza as martyrs' toll climbs to 24,285
GAZA (AFP) - Israel pummelled southern Gaza on Tuesday, martyring dozens, even as authorities announced the winding down of the intense phase of the war that has inflamed tensions across the Middle East.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said at least 24,285 people have been martyred in the war that began on October 7. A ministry statement said some 61,154 people have also been wounded in the Palestinian territory during the war. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under mounting international pressure to end its offensive in Gaza launched in response to Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attacks.
But fears are mounting the war could be widening, with Iran and its proxies stepping up attacks across the region in solidarity with Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Palestinian territory. Overnight, a wave of Israeli strikes killed at least 78 people in the Gaza Strip, Hamas's press office said. An AFP correspondent said the southern city of Khan Yunis was hit hard.
On Tuesday morning, a barrage of 50 rockets was fired at southern Israel, near Netivot, without causing any casualties, the Israeli army said. Fighting has ravaged Gaza since October 7, when Hamas militants carried out an unparalleled attack on Israel that resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Militants also seized about 250 hostages and dragged them back to Gaza, 132 of whom Israel says are still in the coastal territory, including at least 25 believed to have been killed.
More than 24,285 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in Gaza in Israeli bombardments and ground operations since October 7, according to the Hamas government's health ministry.
'Tamp down flames'
AFPTV live footage showed trails of smoke and explosions ring out as Israel's air defences intercepted rockets near the Gaza border. Khan Yunis has been the focus of Israeli military operations since the army said on January 6 that it had dismantled Hamas's military structures in the north and was shifting its focus to the south.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday reiterated calls for a stop to the fighting. "We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to ensure sufficient aid gets to where it is needed, to facilitate the release of the hostages, to tamp down the flames of wider war -- because the longer the conflict in Gaza continues, the greater the risk of escalation and miscalculation," he said.
'Die from the cold'
The United Nations says the Israel-Hamas war has displaced roughly 85 percent of Gaza's 2.4 million population, many of whom have been forced to crowd into shelters and struggle to get food, water, fuel and medical care.
As temperatures plunge, families living in makeshift tents in Rafah have resorted to burning plastic to ward off the chill, despite the noxious fumes. "At night, I feel like we're going to die from the cold," said Haneen Adwan, 31, a mother of six who was forced to flee from central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp.
Hamas's armed wing released a video showing a woman hostage, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held with had been killed in captivity. In a statement released with the video, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades blamed "the Zionist army's bombing" for the deaths of the hostages. Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari rejected the cause of death as a "lie", but added: "We know that we hit targets near the location where they were held", saying an investigation was under way.
Hagit Chen, the mother of one of the hostages, said at an event in Berlin that it was "hard to live, to sleep, to breathe, to eat" because she had heard nothing from her son Itay, 19, since Hamas took him captive.
