The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported on Tuesday that the number of civilians killed by the Israeli occupation had reached 20,915, with 54,918 wounded.
The ministry said that the Israeli forces had committed 18 massacres in the past 24 hours, killing 241 people and injuring 382. It also expressed its concern that the attack on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis could be a precursor to targeting other hospitals in northern Gaza.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory stated on Tuesday that the whereabouts of dozens of women who were arrested by the Israeli forces from their homes and shelters in the Gaza Strip were still unknown. They were among 3,000 detainees who had been forcibly disappeared, including children.
The Observatory said in a statement that it had received information about the detention of hundreds of Palestinians in the past few days, from the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in a city in Gaza. It said that dozens of women were taken to Yarmouk Stadium, where they had their veils removed, were searched by soldiers, and were subjected to harassment, beating, and abuse.
The Observatory added that men, including children as young as 10 and elders over 70, were forced to strip to their underwear and line up in a humiliating way in front of the women who were held in a nearby area inside the stadium.
The Observatory also said that the Israeli army continued to arrest many women, including elderly women over 80, mothers with their infants, and young girls. They were all exposed to harsh detention conditions, degrading treatment, torture, and harassment.
The Observatory confirmed that it had received testimonies of female detainees being threatened with rape.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Telecommunications Company announced that the Israeli forces had cut off all fixed and internet services in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as part of their ongoing aggression.
This was the sixth time that the Israeli forces had disrupted communications in the Gaza Strip since the start of their war on the region last October. Less than two weeks ago, the NetBlox Observatory, which monitors internet access around the world, recorded an internet outage in Gaza that lasted more than four days.
On the ground, the Israeli army admitted that 43 of its soldiers were wounded in clashes with the resistance in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours. Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli army announced that an officer and a soldier were killed and four others were seriously injured in battles the night before, bringing the total number of casualties since the start of the war to 491 officers and soldiers.
Israeli TV Channel 12 reported that the Israeli army was preparing to change its strategy in Gaza, as it realized that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) could not be defeated by a short-term campaign.
Meanwhile, the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, said on Tuesday that they had attacked an Israeli force of eight soldiers in a tunnel east of the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing or wounding them.
The Brigades also said that they had hit two Israeli tanks and a troop carrier with anti-tank missiles during the intense fighting with the Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. They claimed to have destroyed two Merkava tanks with Al-Yassin 105 shells east of the Bureij camp.
The Hamas militants also released footage of an ambush on an Israeli force that entered a house in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, where they detonated three bombs, a shock device, and a flashlight device, killing all the Israeli soldiers.
The Brigades showed photos of the weapons and equipment that they had captured from the Israeli force after the attack. They also said that they had targeted an Israeli foot patrol that infiltrated the Sheikh Zayed Mosque area in the northern Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, announced that they had fired two RPG shells at two Israeli military vehicles in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City. They also said that they had shelled Israeli army positions with mortars in the Juhr al-Dik area in the central Gaza Strip.
The Brigades added that their fighters had been engaged in fierce clashes since the morning with the Israeli forces that had penetrated the front lines east and north of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Both the Al-Quds Brigades and the Al-Qassam Brigades said that they had targeted five Israeli military vehicles on the front lines in Jabalia Al-Balad, north of the Gaza Strip.
