The Israeli occupation continued Wednesday the bombardment of the Gaza Strip for the 61st day, resulting in more than 17,000 deaths and 50,000 injuries, most of them children and women.
The US Agency for International Development announced the provision of approximately $21m in additional humanitarian aid to residents of Gaza and the West Bank “affected by the ongoing conflict.” Nevertheless, the United States continued to supply the Israeli army with lethal weapons.
The medical director at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said that diseases began to spread among the displaced, such as pneumonia and skin rashes. He also stated that some patients are dying in the emergency department due to the lack of intensive care rooms, stressing that the health situation is dangerous after the onset of winter and that there is no shelter for the displaced in the central region.
However, the Director-General of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Munir Al-Barsh, said that there are more than 100 bodies inside Kamal Adwan Hospital, “and the occupation does not allow us to bury them.” He added that the entire north of Gaza has become without health services.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, said that the situation in Gaza is turning into a catastrophe that could have irreversible effects on the Palestinians and peace and security in the region, as he put it. Guterres renewed his call to declare a ceasefire in Gaza, stressing that the matter is urgent to spare the civilian population from greater harm.
The World Food Program also urgently called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The program said that distributing aid in Gaza has become almost impossible and puts the lives of humanitarian workers at risk.
On the ground, the Al-Qassam Brigades – the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – announced that its fighters were able to booby-trap and blow up a house in which many occupation soldiers were barricaded with a barrel bomb in the axis east of the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.
The brigades also announced that it had targeted – in the same axis – two Israeli tanks with Al-Yassin 105 shells, and a third tank in the axis north of the city of Khan Yunis. The brigades bombed the occupied city of Beersheba with a batch of missiles “in response to the massacres against civilians.”
Al-Qassam said that it “targeted 12 Zionist enemy vehicles in the incursion axis into the Beit Lahia project in the northern Gaza Strip. We were able to snipe two Zionist soldiers in the Al-Qarara area, east of the city of Khan Yunis.” It also stated that it targeted “a Zionist tank in the axis east of the city of Khan Yunis with an Al-Yassin 105 shell.”
For its part, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, said that since Wednesday dawn, its fighters were able to “target 5 military vehicles with explosive devices, tandem shells, and RPGs, and engaged in clashes with enemy soldiers from a distance of zero.” It confirmed: “There were deaths and injuries on the front lines.”
Al-Quds Brigades reported that it targeted an Israeli special force with an anti-personnel OG shell in the vicinity of Al-Zalal Mosque, east of Khan Yunis. It said, in a later statement, that it had also bombed enemy concentrations in the vicinity of the Sheikh Nasser area on the Taqadum axis, east of Khan Yunis, with a barrage of 60-caliber regular mortar shells.
At the same time, the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, the military arm of the Popular Resistance Committees, said that its fighters were engaged in fierce clashes on all axes of the enemy army’s advance in Khan Yunis.
Moreover, the Palestinian factions declared a unified position to confront “the conspiracy that aims to displace the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip to Sinai in Egypt.”
The factions warned in a statement on Wednesday, against any coordination with the Israeli project of displacement under the headings of assistance or safe areas, and said that whoever wants to protect the Palestinian people in Gaza must intervene to stop the war of extermination and open the crossings.
