Extract from ABC News
Top US and European diplomats have sought ways to keep the Gaza war from spreading further in the Middle East, but three months after the start of the conflict, more bloodshed has underlined the difficulties they face.
Gun battles have intensified in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis as well as in districts in the centre of the densely populated Palestinian enclave.
Smoke rose from the sites of Israeli bombing on Sunday morning east and north of Khan Younis.
Israeli strikes on houses in Khan Younis killed 50 people, health officials in Nasser Hospital said on Sunday.
Here are the latest developments
- Israeli strike kills two Palestinian journalists in Gaza
- Fresh violence in occupied West Bank
- Jordan's King warns Blinken of 'catastrophic repercussions' of Israel's military campaign
- Israel says fighting will continue through 2024
Israeli strike kills two Palestinian journalists in Gaza
An Israeli air strike on a car near Rafah in southern Gaza on Sunday killed two Palestinian journalists who were out reporting, according to health officials in Gaza and the journalists' union there.
Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya were both freelancers. Mr Al-Dahdouh had done freelance work for Al Jazeera and was the son of the Qatar-based TV station's chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Al-Dahdouh. A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was injured.
Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the killing of the two journalists and said it had been a deliberate attack.
"We urge the International Criminal Court, the governments and human rights organisations, and the United Nations to hold Israel accountable for its heinous crimes and demand an end to the targeting and killing of journalists," the network said in a statement.
When contacted by AFP, the Israeli army requested the geographic coordinates of the strike. Several hours after the strike, the Israeli army had not replied to AFP's request for a comment.
In a statement on December 16, in response to the death of another Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, the Israeli army said: "The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists."
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international watchdog, said that as of Saturday, 77 journalists and media workers had been killed — 70 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.
A video posted on an Al Jazeera-linked YouTube channel showed Wael Al-Dahdouh crying next to his son's body and holding his hand. Later, after his son's burial, he said in televised remarks that journalists in Gaza would keep doing their job.
"All the world needs to see what is happening here," he said.
Wael Dahdouh previously lost his wife, two children and a grandchild in an October 26 air strike, and was injured in an Israeli strike last month that killed a co-worker.
Fresh violence in occupied West Bank
Outside Gaza there was fresh violence in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli aircraft fired on Palestinian militants who had attacked troops in the West Bank, the military said, and Palestinian health officials said six Palestinians were killed in the strike.
An Israeli border police officer was killed and others wounded when their vehicle was hit by an explosive device during operations in the West Bank city of Jenin, the military and police said.
Israeli police said on Sunday that officers responding to a car-ramming attack at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank had shot a Palestinian girl, with medics confirming the child's death.
"As a result of shooting at the terrorists, a girl who was in another vehicle at the checkpoint was hurt," police said.
Israel's emergency medical agency Magen David Adom said a three-year-old girl "was pronounced deceased" after an examination.
Confrontations in the West Bank have risen sharply since Israeli forces launched their retaliatory offensive on Gaza, laying waste to the strip as they seek to wipe out Hamas.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers over the past weeks in the West Bank and security forces have made thousands of arrests.
Jordan's King warns Blinken of 'catastrophic repercussions' of Israel's military campaign
Jordan's King Abdullah urged US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to use Washington's influence over Israel to press it for an immediate ceasefire, a palace statement said, warning him of the "catastrophic repercussions" of Israel's continued military campaign.
Mr Blinken and the European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, were on separate trips to the region to try to quell spillover from the war into Lebanon, the West Bank and Red Sea shipping lanes.
"We have an intense focus on preventing this conflict from spreading," Mr Blinken said, who was in Jordan on Sunday and will also travel to Israel, the West Bank, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt during his fourth trip to the region.
Mr Blinken will use the visits to get hesitant Muslim nations in the region to prepare to play a role in the reconstruction, governance and security of Gaza if and when Israel achieves its goal of eliminating Hamas, said a senior state department official.
The fighting has displaced most of the enclave's 2.3 million population, with many homes and civilian infrastructure left in ruins amid acute shortages of food, water and medicine.
"We hope that [Mr] Blinken looks at us with an eye of mercy, ends the war, ends the misery we are living in.
"We are a people that must live a free and dignified life," said one woman, Um Mohamad Al-Arqan, standing by the tent where she is living.
'Fighting will continue'
The October 7 Hamas rampage in southern Israel killed 1,200 people and 240 were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
More than 100 hostages are still believed to be held by Hamas.
According to Palestinian health officials, Israel's offensive has killed 22,835 Palestinians.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari gave a round-up of the offensive on Saturday, saying Israeli forces had completely dismantled Hamas's "military framework" in northern Gaza and had killed around 8,000 militants in that area.
"We are now focused on dismantling Hamas in the centre of and south of the [Gaza] strip," he said in an online briefing.
"Fighting will continue during 2024. We are operating according to a plan to achieve the war's goals, to dismantle Hamas in the north and south."
Palestinian health ministry casualty figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians, but the ministry has said that 70 per cent of Gaza's dead are women and people under 18.
Israel has faced international pressure over the mounting death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government appears set to press on.
Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip killed gunmen loading weapons into a vehicle and dismantled a launch site that fired rockets towards Israel, the Israeli military said.
Hamas' armed wing said its fighters destroyed a troop carrier in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Reuters/ABC
No comments:
Post a Comment