Dozens of people were killed and wounded yesterday in the continuous Israeli bombings on various areas of the Gaza Strip, concentrated in the cities of Gaza and Khan Younis, and raised the number of Gazans killed since October 7 to 25,105, according to the Wafa agency, linked to the Palestinian National Authority, citing data from the Gaza Ministry of Health. The total number of injured would be 62,681, most of them women and children. Thousands of people are believed to remain under the rubble of bombed homes, such as that of independent journalist Karam Ahmed Abu Ajram, 25, who died yesterday in the Abasan al Kabira area, east of Khan Yunis.
According to Hamas, the fighting was concentrated yesterday in Khan Younis, a city in the south of the strip, but the Wafa agency reported Israeli bombings in Jabaliya, in the north, neighborhoods of Gaza City such as Rimal, Raduán and Al Nasr, or Deir. al Balah, in the center, were targeted yesterday by the Israeli army. Medical sources said occupation forces were preventing ambulances from reaching the bombed areas.
Yesterday, dozens of displaced people, cans in hand, waited during a water distribution organized by Doctors Without Borders in Rafah, in the extreme south of Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken refuge, Afp confirmed. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, there has been “no progress” in increasing humanitarian aid deliveries to the besieged territory, and the Israeli government remains deaf to international pressure for a humanitarian ceasefire.
Hamas yesterday admitted “mistakes” that led to the deaths of civilians during its attack on Israel on October 7. In a rare nearly 20-page document, Hamas says the Al Aqsa Flood operation was a “necessary step” and a “normal response” to “all Israeli plots against the Palestinian people.” Offering for the first time its “version of events,” Hamas acknowledged that “perhaps errors occurred” in the “chaos” caused by the “sudden collapse of the military and security apparatus” on the border between Israel and Gaza. However, he denied attacking civilians except “by accident and during clashes with occupation forces.”
This attack on military posts, community villages and participants in a music festival led to the deaths of more than 1,140 people, most of them civilians. About 250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, including about 100 who were freed in late November during a brief truce. According to Israel, 132 hostages remain held in the territory, 28 of whom are believed to have died.
In its document, Hamas demands “the immediate cessation of Israeli aggression,” while Israel, which seeks to “annihilate” the Islamist movement in Gaza, rejects any end to the fighting without the release of the hostages.
