The American government announced on Friday, December 29, that it had “urgently” approved, without going through Congress, the sale of artillery ammunition to Israel for an amount of $147.5 million. These are 155 mm shells and various military equipment taken from the stocks of the United States army, according to a press release from the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, a federal agency responsible in particular for American military sales to Foreign states.
The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, concluded “that an emergency exists requiring this immediate sale to the Israeli government,” explains the press release. On December 9, Washington also agreed to the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 tank shells used in the war against Hamas in Gaza.
On the 85th day of this war, triggered by an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 which left nearly 1,140 dead in Israel, the majority civilians, air raids and ground fighting show no sign of respite in the Gaza strip.
During the night, the Palestinian Islamist movement reported violent clashes in Khan Younes, the main city in the south of the strip, and in the center of this besieged territory, including deadly airstrikes in the Nuseirat sector. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, administered by Hamas, 187 people were killed on Friday in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll since the start of the war to more than 21,500.
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, the Israeli army announced strikes in Syria, in retaliation for rockets fired from this neighboring country which fell into border territories under its control.