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ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
🔴 Live: Dozens killed in new strikes in Gaza as Israel presses on with offensive
Israel pressed on with its offensive in and around Gaza’s main cities on Friday, more than two months after Hamas’s deadly attack sparked a war that has claimed thousands of lives and left the Palestinian territory in ruins. Early Friday, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported another 40 dead in strikes near Gaza City, and “dozens” more in Jabalia and Khan Younis. Follow our live blog for all the latest developments. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).
Issued on: 08/12/2023 – 04:28
Modified: 08/12/2023 – 07:22
3 min
A picture taken from Rafah shows smoke billowing following Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on December 7, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and Hamas.
A picture taken from Rafah shows smoke billowing following Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on December 7, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. © Mahmud Hams, AFP
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FRANCE 24
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FRANCE 24
Summary:
Heavy urban combat raged in and around Gaza’s biggest cities on Thursday, with major battles reported in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north and Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Israel and Hamas have both said the past 48 hours have brought the most intensive fighting since the start of the war.
The UN Security Council meets on Gaza Friday under acute pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and will vote on urging an immediate ceasefire after weeks of ruinous war.
Israel and the UN signalled that the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into the Gaza Strip might be opened soon to allow aid in. Since the start of the war, the tightly controlled Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt has been the only point of entry into the enclave.
The head of medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said Thursday that Gaza faces a catastrophe extending “far beyond a humanitarian crisis”, describing the situation in the densely populated enclave as chaotic.
Hamas attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, according to the Israeli government. Since then, at least 17,177 people, including 7,112 children, have been killed in Israel’s ensuing assault on the Gaza Strip, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry said. At least 46,000 people have been injured and at least 7,600 people are missing, the Hamas media office said.
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2 hours ago
Peace not possible if Hamas can continue to attack from Gaza, says Germany
Ensuring lasting peace in the Middle East will not be possible as long as Hamas can continue its attacks from the Gaza strip, a spokesperson from Germany’s foreign office said on Friday.
At the moment “we advocate for further ceasefires”, the spokesperson said at a regular press conference in Berlin, adding that Israel should avoid civilian suffering in the southern Gaza strip and is bound to abide by humanitarian law.
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2 hours ago
Turkey’s Erdogan says no plans for now to meet Biden on Gaza
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was cited on Friday as saying that a meeting with US President Joe Biden on the situation in Gaza was not on his agenda, but that he would discuss it and other issues if Biden called.
Speaking to reporters on a flight from Athens, Erdogan said his foreign minister would hold talks in Washington as part of a so-called contact group of Muslim countries on Friday. He hoped it would lead to the end of US support for Israel, according to broadcaster Haberturk and others.
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3 hours ago
Strikes hitting journalists in Lebanon occurred in ‘active combat zone’, says Israeli army
Israel’s army said Friday the October strikes in Lebanon that killed one journalist and wounded six others, including two from AFP, occurred in an “active combat zone” and were under review.
A group of seven journalists from Reuters, Al Jazeera and AFP were hit by two strikes in quick succession on October 13 as they were filming clashes between the Israeli army and armed groups in southern Lebanon.
An AFP investigation published on Thursday found the strikes were deliberate and targeted, and the type of tank shell that struck the journalists was only used by the Israeli army.
Issam Abdallah, a 37-year-old journalist for the Reuters news agency, was killed instantly by the first strike.
The other six were all wounded. AFP photographer Christina Assi, 28, later had a leg amputated and is still in hospital.
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3 hours ago
Rockets fired at the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone
At least three rockets targeted the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone at dawn on Friday, landing on the outskirts of the district housing government and diplomatic buildings, an Iraqi security official said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
A US military official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that alarms had gone off and that “likely impact sounds” could be heard near the US embassy and Union III base, where troops from the international anti-jihadist coalition are stationed.
This is the first reported attack against the United States embassy in the Iraqi capital since the Israel-Hamas war began in early October, raising regional tensions and fears of a wider conflict.
FRANCE 24
Rockets fired at the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone
At least three rockets targeted the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone at dawn on Friday, landing on the outskirts of the district housing government and diplomatic buildings, an Iraqi security official…
Read the article on https://www.france24.com
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6 hours ago
Hamas says captive Israeli soldier killed in clash with special forces
The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Hamas said an Israeli soldier who had been held hostage was killed early on Friday in a clash between the militants and an Israeli special forces unit that was conducting a rescue operation.
Al-Qassam Brigades said its fighters had discovered the rescue operation and confronted the unit which led to the death and injury of a number of the Israeli forces involved in the operation, without specifying a number.
They identified the captive soldier who was killed and gave an identification number for him.
The Israeli Defence Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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6 hours ago
Israeli forces kill 6 Palestinians in West Bank raid, says Palestinian health ministry
Israeli forces shot dead six Palestinians on Friday at a refugee camp in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The ministry, updating an earlier toll of five dead, did not identify them but said they had been killed “by bullets from the occupation (Israel) in the Al-Fara refugee camp” near Tubas.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Clashes escalated with the (Israeli) forces who stormed the camp amid intense fire and the blasts of explosions,” said the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Violence in the territory has flared since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
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6 hours ago
‘Everything is rising in its intensity and that includes the number of dead’
The intensity of the fighting in the weeks since the ceasefire collapsed is much greater than what we saw in the three weeks prior to that, FRANCE 24’s correspondent Irris Makler reported from Jerusalem Friday.
In Israel, she said, “they list the people who died in the media in the evening, and every evening there are more and more Israeli soldiers”.
It is harder to see the human cost on Hamas’s side, “because it doesn’t give you a figure for its soldiers who have died”, Makler said.
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7 hours ago
Palestinian Authority working with US on postwar plan for Gaza
The Palestinian Authority is working with US officials on a plan to run Gaza after the war is over, Bloomberg News reported, citing Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.
The preferred outcome of the conflict would be for the Hamas militant group that controls Gaza to become a junior partner under the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), helping to build a new independent state that includes the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, Ramallah-based Shtayyeh said in an interview to Bloomberg News on Thursday.
“If they (Hamas) are ready to come to an agreement and accept the political platform of the PLO, then there will be room for talk. Palestinians should not be divided,” Shtayyeh said, adding that Israel’s aim to fully defeat Hamas is unrealistic.
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10 hours ago
UN Security Council to consider urging Gaza ceasefire
The UN Security Council meets on Gaza Friday under acute pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and will vote on urging an immediate ceasefire after weeks of ruinous war.
Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said “the US and all other members of the UN Security Council have a clear obligation under international law to prevent atrocities”.
“There can be no justification for continuing to block meaningful action by the UN Security Council to stop massive civilian bloodshed, the complete collapse of the humanitarian system, and even worse horrors resulting from the breakdown of public order and massive displacement,” she added.
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10 hours ago
Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer killed in Gaza strike
The Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, one of the leaders of a young generation of authors in Gaza who chose to write in English to tell their stories, was killed in an Israeli strike, his friends said overnight Thursday.
“My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family a few minutes ago,” wrote his friend, the Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha, on Facebook.
“I don’t want to believe this. We both loved to pick strawberries together.”
Alareer had said a few days after Israel began its ground offensive in October that he refused to leave northern Gaza, the epicentre of the fighting at the time.
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10 hours ago
Israel pursues Hamas in and around Gaza’s biggest cities
Israel pressed on with its offensive in and around Gaza’s main cities on Friday.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave reported another 40 people dead in strikes near Gaza City, and “dozens” more in Jabalia and Khan Younis.
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Yesterday’s key developments:
Israeli troops battled Hamas fighters Thursday in the heart of southern Gaza’s main city where a top militant leader is believed to be hiding, while pressing their offensive across the besieged territory. Breaking through Hamas’s defences of Gaza’s second largest city, Israeli troops, tanks, armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers rolled into Khan Younis, forcing already displaced civilians to flee again, witnesses said.
Palestinian gunshot victims in the occupied West Bank are now being shot more often in the head and torso rather than the limbs, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Thursday. The medical charity’s international president, who recently returned from the West Bank, said that since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7, there had been a “clear shift” in the injuries being witnessed by MSF staff in West Bank hospitals.
An investigation by Agence France-Presse into the strike in southern Lebanon on October 13 that killed a Reuters journalist and injured six others, including two from AFP, points to a tank shell only used by the Israeli army in this high-tension border region. Jointly conducted with Airwars, an NGO that investigates attacks on civilians in conflict situations, the investigation found that the attack involved a 120-mm tank shell only used by the Israeli army in this region.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in his strongest public criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war on Hamas in south Gaza, said there was a gap between the government’s declared intentions to protect civilians and the casualties.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
