“BALL OF FIRE”
Gaza well being authorities say near 19,000 folks have been confirmed killed, with hundreds extra feared buried beneath rubble.
Gaza residents reported one other evening of intense combating and bombardment the size of the enclave on Friday, together with in Sheijaia, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah, and Beit Hanoun within the north, and the centre and northern fringes of the principle southern metropolis Khan Younis.
Hospitals in Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah reported a brand new inflow of useless and wounded early on Friday.
“The Gaza Strip became a ball of fireside in a single day, we might hear explosions and gunshots echoing from all instructions,” Ahmed, 45, an electrician and father of six, advised Reuters from a shelter in a central space of the densely populated enclave.
“They’ll destroy properties and roads and kill civilians from the air or by means of blind tank shelling, however after they come head to head with the resistance, they lose.”
Washington has shielded its long-term ally Israel diplomatically to date, vetoing a UN Safety Council decision every week in the past calling for a ceasefire, however Biden’s robust remarks on civilian casualties this week had been a shift in tone.
The previous two weeks have seen an intensification of fight since a week-long truce collapsed initially of December, with Israel now extending its floor marketing campaign from the northern half of the enclave into the south.
Though Israel had stated its forces had largely achieved their goals within the north, combating there has solely worsened, whereas additionally spreading to the south, the place a lot of the inhabitants is now sheltering. The overwhelming majority of Gazans have been pushed from their properties over the previous two months, many a number of instances.
The Israeli navy stated on Friday that it had mistakenly killed three hostages held in Gaza after wrongly figuring out them as a risk throughout fight in Shejaiya. Earlier on Friday it stated it had recovered the our bodies of three different hostages killed by Hamas. Israel says it believes round 20 of the greater than 130 hostages nonetheless held in Gaza are useless.
The White Home on Friday stated the killings of the three Israeli hostages in Gaza by the Israeli navy was a “tragic mistake”.
“We do not have good visibility on precisely how this operation unfolded and the way this tragic mistake was made,” spokesman John Kirby stated.
Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based pan-Arab TV channel, one of many few worldwide broadcasters nonetheless working out of Gaza, stated certainly one of its cameramen, Samer Abu Daqqa, was killed in an Israeli strike whereas overlaying the aftermath of a strike on a faculty.
The broadcaster’s Gaza correspondent Wael al-Dahdouh was injured.
Dahdouh is well-known to viewers throughout the Center East after studying final month throughout an emotional reside broadcast that his spouse, son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli air strike.