Israel and Hamas at war, day 200 | No respite in Gaza on 200th day of war

Deadly Israeli bombings targeted the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, 200^e day of the war between Israel and Hamas which shows no sign of respite while an offensive on the overpopulated city of Rafah is prepared.

Many foreign capitals and humanitarian organizations are concerned about ongoing preparations for an Israeli ground operation on Rafah, at the southern end of the besieged Palestinian territory, the stated objective of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite the presence in this city of a million and half of people, residents and displaced people.

For Jan Egeland, secretary general of the NGO Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an offensive on Rafah, “the largest camp for displaced people on earth,” would lead to an “apocalyptic situation.”

The Hamas Ministry of Health on Tuesday counted 32 deaths in 24 hours across the Gaza Strip, where airstrikes and artillery fire targeted the Boureij and Nousseirat sectors in the center, according to a correspondent. of the AFP.

AFP footage also showed bombings on Jabaliya in the north, while the army said it had hit several Hamas positions in southern Gaza.

“The Enemy Trapped”

“After 200 days, the enemy remains trapped in the sands of Gaza. Without goal, without horizon, without the illusion of victory or the release of prisoners,” said the spokesperson for the armed wing of the Islamist movement, Abou Obeida.

“We will continue to strike and resist as long as the occupation’s aggression continues on a single centimeter of our land,” he added.

Benjamin Netanyahu assured him on Monday that his “determination” to obtain the release of the hostages held in Gaza remained “unshakeable”, while the two camps accuse each other of blocking negotiations for a truce.

The war was triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out from Gaza against Israel by Hamas commandos, which resulted in the death of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official data. Israelis.

More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain captive in Gaza, 34 of whom have died according to Israeli officials.

The army announced on Tuesday the death of a soldier, bringing to 261 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of ground fighting on October 27.

In response to the attack, Israel has promised to destroy Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, and is carrying out a military offensive that has so far killed 34,183 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas health ministry. .

“In the line of fire”

To defeat Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union in particular, and free all the hostages, Benjamin Netanyahu continues to announce an upcoming offensive on Rafah.

Israel considers this border town with Egypt as the last major bastion of the Islamist movement, which reportedly maintains four battalions there.

According to Egyptian officials, cited by the Wall Street JournalIsrael is preparing to move civilians to the nearby town of Khan Younes, in particular, where it plans to set up shelters and food distribution centers.

This evacuation operation would last two to three weeks and would be carried out in coordination with the United States, Egypt and other Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates, according to these officials.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he was studying a “series of measures to take in preparation for operations in Rafah, in particular on the evacuation of civilians.”

But the planned offensive arouses the disapproval of the international community, starting with Washington, which fears a bloodbath.

The British organization Oxfam published on April 3, with twelve NGOs, a call for a ceasefire, recalling that 1.3 million civilians, including at least 610,000 children, were in Rafah “directly in the line of shot “.

“We currently do not see any evacuation plan for civilians” from Rafah, Fabrizio Carboni, director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told AFP on Tuesday, for whom a massive evacuation would not be an option. is “not possible” under current conditions.

Others are also concerned about the delivery of humanitarian aid, which arrives mainly from Egypt in the territory threatened by famine. An offensive “would cut us off from our vital artery: the Rafah crossing,” explained Ahmed Bayram, NRC spokesperson in the Middle East.

“Climate of impunity”

On Tuesday, the UN called for an international investigation into the mass graves discovered in the territory’s two main hospitals, al-Chifa in Gaza City and Nasser in Khan Younes, stressing the need for an independent investigation in the face of the “climate of current ‘impunity’.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said he was “horrified by the destruction” of these two hospitals “and by the announced discovery of mass graves in and around these sites”.

Gaza Civil Defense said it had exhumed since Saturday 340 bodies of people killed and buried by Israeli forces in mass graves inside the Nasser hospital.

The army denied on Tuesday that it had buried any bodies, saying that it had, during its operations in this hospital, examined bodies “buried by Palestinians” to determine whether hostages were among them.

In the ruins of the al-Chifa hospital, a doctor, Amjad Alewah, came to show an AFP correspondent on Tuesday the emergency reception, charred and partially emptied of its furniture. “After 200 days of war, we are now in the middle of the rubble of this large hospital (…) We received thousands of wounded every day,” he remembers.