On December 23, on the eve of Christmas, a new round of air and ground attacks by Israeli forces caused at least 58 deaths and 88 injuries in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by the Hamas militia. . One of the bombings was directed against the Al Mawasi displaced persons camp, located south of the enclave, despite the fact that this place had been classified as “safe territory” by the Jewish State. Here, eight people have died – including two children – as confirmed by two of the doctors who received the bodies at the Nasser hospital, in the neighboring town of Khan Yunis.
“We were sitting (…) Suddenly, two rockets fell, one after the other. We were warming up, and there were kids here. “As you can see, we have no weapons and we have nothing to do with any movement,” Ahmed al-Hamarna, one of the Palestinians present at Monday’s attack, told Reuters. The Nasser hospital also claimed to have received the bodies of six escorts who were guarding an aid convoy and who were hit by another air attack.
In the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the center of the enclave, the authorities denounced in a statement published on Telegram the entry of 17 military vehicles and dozens of soldiers who, with the support of the Air Force, left “dozens of civilian victims, among them women and children.” The Israelis also showed up with “bulldozers,” with which they destroyed around twenty homes, adding to a total of nearly 1,500 homes destroyed since October 7, 2023. “They have already hit the camp five times since it was established.” This genocide began and the victims of these other attacks amount to a hundred dead and dozens of wounded,” the ministry highlighted.
In the north of the Gaza Strip – which has been under intense military pressure for three months – the Israeli army has ordered the evacuation of the Kamal Adwan hospital, one of three still partially functioning in an area where between 65,000 and 75,000 still live. people, according to figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “We have about 400 civilians in the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators,” its director, Hussam Abu Safiya, told Reuters. This Monday, the NGO Oxfam Intermon denounced that Israel continues to “systematically” prevent the delivery of food in this area of the northern Strip. “It is absolute desperation: not having food or shelter for the family in the freezing winter. It is abominable that, despite the fact that Israel publicly and relentlessly violates international law and uses hunger as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing,” criticized Oxfam’s director for the Middle East and North Africa. Sally Abi-Jalil.
These attacks come in the midst of indirect negotiations between Hamas and the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners for the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas in its offensive on October 7, 2023. This Sunday, The Gaza authorities estimated the total number of deaths since the start of the Israeli offensive at 45,259 people, one day after the jihadist group’s attacks, and 107,627 the number of injured. The figures do not include the nearly 11,000 bodies that remain hidden in the rubble or lying on the roads, nor those that have not been taken to hospitals, according to data managed by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
