Gaza war rages on Christmas Eve as Biden urges caution

AFP | Gaza                                                      

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Israel pushed yesterday with its military campaign to destroy Hamas over the October 7 attacks, as the focus of the deadly combat shifted to southern Gaza where most displaced Palestinians are trapped.

US President Joe Biden stressed the “critical need” to protect civilians, in a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed Israel would “continue the war until all of its goals have been achieved”, officials said.

As heavy fighting raged on, the Israeli army said it had struck another 200 targets in the past 24 hours in the besieged Palestinian territory where it is seeking to defeat Hamas and free remaining hostages. The army said 153 troops had died in Gaza since it launched its ground invasion on October 27.

Ten soldiers were lost in battles on Saturday, one of the deadliest days for the Israeli side. “This is a difficult morning, after a very difficult day of fighting in Gaza,” said Netanyahu. “The war is exacting a very heavy price... but we have no choice but to keep fighting.”

The army said soldiers had raided a northern Gaza compound near schools, a mosque and a clinic and found “explosive belts adapted for children, dozens of mortar shells, hundreds of grenades and intelligence documents”.

Hamas rejected those claims as lies meant “to justify their massacring of innocent civilians and their destructive aggression that has affected the entire infrastructure... in the already blockaded Gaza Strip”.

Israel’s withering military campaign, including massive aerial bombardment, has killed 20,424 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. Vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins and its 2.4 million people have endured dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine due to an Israeli siege, alleviated only by the limited arrival of aid trucks.

Eighty percent of Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many now shielding against the winter cold in makeshift tents and forced into the south of Gaza even as ground fighting comes closer. Near the far southern Gaza city of Rafah, Umm Amir Abu al-Awf, 27, suffered wounds to her hand and legs in a strike on her house early yesterday. “Who won?” she said. “Nothing has been achieved except killing civilians... They keep saying Rafah is safe. It is not safe. Nowhere is safe. Every house has a martyr and injured.”

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus indicated that forces were close to gaining operational control in northern Gaza and that now “we focus our efforts against Hamas in southern Gaza”. Fighting has raged in the main southern city of Khan Yunis, the birthplace of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza and the man Israel holds most responsible for the October 7 attack.

Elsewhere, Palestinian rescuers scrambled again to pull survivors and bodies from the rubble of a destroyed residential building, after a strike hit in the central city of Deir al-Balah. “I was praying when a huge explosion occurred,” said Yazan Moqbel, a wounded man whose sister was still under the broken concrete. “Rubble fell on us. I didn’t know what happened.” The head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, urged an end to the suffering in the third month of the war.

“For aid to reach people in need, hostages to be released, more displacement to be avoided and above all stop the appalling loss of lives, a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza is the only way forward,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “War defies logic and humanity, and prepares a future of more hatred and less peace.” On Friday, the United States allowed the passage of a UN Security Council resolution that effectively called on Israel to allow “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of life-saving aid to Gaza “at scale”.