News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 10th December 2024
Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip killed at least 34 Palestinians overnight and on Tuesday, according to medics, as Israeli tanks surged into central and southern Gaza.
An Israeli bombardment killed at least 25 people in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been operating since October, and injured scores more in a multi-story building, according to doctors. According to the Palestinian Civil Emergency, the majority of those killed belonged to the same family, which included women and children. Images shared online showed the victims arranged in a single mass grave in the town.
Another airstrike struck a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least seven people. It injured a number of others, according to medics and the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service, and killed two civilians in Rafah, south of the enclave.
According to witnesses in the coastal town of Deir Al-Balah, Israeli naval troops apprehended six Palestinian fishermen who attempted to sail into the Mediterranean Sea earlier on Tuesday.According to Israeli reports, gunmen led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas killed about 1,200 people and carried over 250 hostages back to Gaza when they attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. More than 44,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s 14-month war operation in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials.
Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar, backed by the US, have failed to reach an agreement on a cease-fire, but recent signals of hope among Israeli and Palestinian leaders suggest that an end-of-war settlement is closer.On Monday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas’ growing isolation following the demise of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad could pave the way for an agreement to return hostages, but it was too early to determine whether such attempts would succeed. On Tuesday, a Hamas spokesman declined to discuss the details of the conversations, but told Reuters that mediators had recently increased their efforts, stressing the group’s determination to demonstrate the flexibility required “to end the aggression on our people.”
A Palestinian official familiar with the mediation effort claimed Hamas has asked other Gaza factions to provide the names of Israeli and international hostages in its control, whether dead or alive, indicating potential progress in the talks. Hamas seeks an end-of-conflict agreement that includes the release of Israeli and international prisoners held captive in Gaza, as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, but Netanyahu has stated that the war would not stop until Hamas is annihilated.
