Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing at least six Palestinians, Palestinian health authorities said Wednesday. The Israeli military also expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the territory. Residents reported shelling and airstrikes in the tiny, cramped enclave, including the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, the southern city of Khan Younis and the southern town of Rafah, where tens of thousands have sought refuge in recent weeks. Much of northern Gaza was pounded to rubble weeks ago. More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead. About 1,200 people were killed after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, with around 240 people taken hostage. Israel says it aims to free the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza.
Quick Read
- West Bank Refugee Camp Raid by Israeli Forces: Israeli military forces conducted a raid in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, resulting in the deaths of at least six Palestinians, as reported by Palestinian health authorities. This operation is part of an ongoing conflict in the region.
- Expansion of Ground Offensive in Gaza: The Israeli military has also intensified its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, focusing on densely populated urban refugee camps in central Gaza. This has led to significant shelling and airstrikes in areas like the Bureij refugee camp, Khan Younis, and Rafah, where many have sought refuge.
- Casualties in the Conflict: Since the start of the war, more than 20,900 Palestinians, predominantly women and children, have been killed. The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza does not distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties in these figures.
- Objective of Israeli Operations: Israel’s military objectives include freeing over 100 hostages reportedly held in Gaza following an incursion by Hamas into southern Israel on October 7, during which about 1,200 people were killed.
- Duration and Intensity of the Conflict: The Israeli Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, has indicated that the conflict with Hamas might last for many months, with no immediate resolutions in sight. Recent Israeli airstrikes near the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis resulted in 20 Palestinian deaths.
- Impact on Gaza’s Infrastructure and Health Capacity: The ongoing conflict has significantly disrupted telecommunications and medical services in Gaza. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported a drastic reduction in Gaza’s health capacity, with hospitals overwhelmed by trauma cases.
- Israeli Military Casualties: The Israeli military reported additional soldier fatalities in Gaza, bringing their total military losses since the beginning of ground operations to 166.
- Hamas’ Response: The armed wing of Hamas claimed to have attacked Israeli military vehicles in Khan Younis, a hotspot for recent fighting.
- International Response and Diplomacy: The U.S. has urged Israel to minimize civilian casualties amid growing international calls for a ceasefire. Simultaneously, discussions in Washington between U.S. and Israeli officials are focusing on post-war governance and security in Gaza, along with efforts to bring home remaining hostages.
- Iran-Hamas Relations: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s spokesman claimed that Hamas’s attack in southern Israel on October 7 was retaliation for the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani. However, Hamas denied this claim, stating that the operation was a response to threats to the al-Aqsa mosque and ongoing aggression against Palestinians.
Reuters has the story:
Israeli forces raid a West Bank refugee camp, dozens more Palestinians killed
Newsslooks- CAIRO/GAZA/JERUSALEM, Dec 27 (Reuters)
Israeli forces pounded central Gaza by land, sea and air on Wednesday and Palestinian authorities reported dozens more deaths including 20 in one attack after Israel’s military chief said the war on Hamas would grind on for months.
Reflecting Israeli resolve to wipe out Hamas despite growing international calls for a ceasefire amid a humanitarian crisis, Israel’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said fighting would last “many months” and there were no “magic solutions” or “shortcuts”.
A Gaza health ministry statement said an Israeli air strike killed 20 Palestinians on Wednesday near the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
A telecommunications outage in much of the enclave hindered efforts to reach Palestinian casualties overnight but was gradually coming back online at mid-morning.
In central Gaza’s Al-Maghazi district, five Palestinians were killed in one air strike, medics said, while to the north in Gaza City health officials said the bodies of seven Palestinians killed overnight arrived at Al Shifa Hospital.
Residents also reported heavy fighting east and north of the Al-Bureij district and in the nearby village of Juhr Ad-Deek, where they said Israeli tanks are stationed.
Israel’s military on Wednesday reported three more soldiers killed in action in Gaza, bringing total military losses in the enclave since ground operations began on Oct. 20 to 166.
The Hamas armed wing said its fighters attacked four Israeli bulldozers and a tank in the northern part of Khan Younis, the scene of heavy fighting for several days.
Israeli intensified its raids this week, particularly in a central area just south of the waterway that bisects the narrow coastal strip. The Israeli army told civilians to leave the area, though many said there was no safe place left to go.
The World Health Organization released footage, taken mostly on Monday and Tuesday at several Gaza hospitals, with WHO emergency medical team coordinator Sean Casey saying Gaza’s health capacity was 20 percent of what it was 80 days ago.
‘IT’S A BLOODBATH’
“There’s blood everywhere in these hospitals at the moment,” said Casey, adding that nowhere in Gaza was safe.
“We’re seeing almost only trauma cases come through the door and at a scale that’s quite difficult to believe. It’s a bloodbath as we said before, it’s carnage.”
Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages in a cross-border rampage on Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israel’s history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with an assault that has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.
The Gaza health ministry said Israeli forces had killed 195 Palestinians and wounded 325 in the past 24 hours, bringing the recorded toll to 21,110 killed and 55,243 wounded in Israeli attacks in the coastal Palestinian territory since Oct. 7.
Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.
The Israeli military said it was continuing to strike what it called terror targets in Gaza, at one point using its navy to hit suspects deemed to pose a threat to ground troops.
In the Shejaia district of Gaza City an Israeli attack on militant fighters on foot caused secondary explosions, indicating the area was rigged with explosives to attack soldiers, a military statement said.
Gaza authorities buried 80 unidentified Palestinians on Tuesday whose bodies had been handed over by Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the health ministry said.
According to the Islamic Waqf, or religious affairs ministry, the bodies were collected from Gaza’s north.
Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which Hamas denies. But even Israel’s closest ally the U.S. has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate bombing”.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, six youths were killed in an Israeli raid into the city of Tulkarm, the Palestinian health ministry said. An Israeli military statement on the incident said Israeli forces on a counter-terrorism operation came under attack by militants who threw explosive devices at them. The attackers were struck by an Israeli air force aircraft, it said.
Residents said the youths were neither fighters nor militants and were far away from areas where clashes had erupted.
US-ISRAELI TALKS ON WAR ‘DAY AFTER’
In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Tuesday discussed planning for what happens when the war ends, including governance and security in Gaza.
The two also touched on efforts to bring home the remaining hostages and a transition to a different phase of the war to focus on Hamas leaders, a U.S. official said.
The United States has pressed Israel in recent weeks to scale down its war to a more targeted operation. But Washington is still seen in the region as a supporter of Israel and U.S. forces have been attacked by Iran-backed militants in the Middle East.
In an interview with Egyptian TV, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel intended to stay in Gaza after the war “but the whole world does not agree with it”.
He said the U.S. could “order” Israel to agree that Gaza become part of a future Palestinian state.
HAMAS IN A SPAT WITH IRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD SPOKESMAN
BEIRUT — A spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed Wednesday that the deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 was launched in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. Hamas promptly denied the claim, in a rare public spat between the Palestinian militant group and its main sponsor.
The paramilitary guard’s spokesman Ramezan Sharif made the comments at a news conference where he threatened retaliation for the killing of another top Iranian military figure, Gen. Razi Mousavi, who was killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria on Monday.
On Wednesday, hundreds of mourners processed through the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala with Mousavi’s body. It is an Iranian tradition to take the bodies of prominent figures to the shrines of Shiite saints before being repatriated for burial.
Sharif said that the Oct. 7 attack — in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 240 taken hostage — was “one of the acts of revenge by the resistance front against the U.S. and the Zionists for the assassination of the martyr Soleimani.”
Hamas in a statement denied Sharif’s characterization and said the Oct. 7 operation was launched in response to threats to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and to the “Zionist occupation and its ongoing aggression against our people and our holy sites.”
Iranian and Hamas officials have previously denied that Iran ordered or played a role in planning the incursion. Hamas officials have pushed — sometimes publicly — for Iran and affiliated militant groups, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, to intervene more forcefully against Israel in the ensuing war, which has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the Gaza enclave.
