The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, continued his tour of the Middle East on Tuesday February 6 to try to impose a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, devastated after four months of war.
Meanwhile, bombings and fighting rage in the Palestinian enclave. Strikes hit the towns of Khan Younes (South) – accused by Israel of being a stronghold of the Palestinian Islamist movement and shelled for weeks – and Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where more than 1.3 million people having fled the fighting, out of a total of 2.4 million inhabitants in Gaza.
The Hamas health ministry announced on Tuesday a toll of 27,585 people killed and 66,835 injured in the Palestinian enclave since the start of the conflict. This assessment could not be independently verified.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas published a statement on Tuesday (February 6) in which it claimed to have submitted to Egyptian and Qatari mediators its response regarding a proposed ceasefire with Israel, which includes the fate of hostages held since October 7.
The text does not specify the nature of this response. But Qatar earlier said it had received a “positive” response from Hamas “regarding the general framework of the hostage agreement.”
The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said early in the evening that he would transmit Hamas’ response to Israel on Wednesday. “There is still a lot of work to be done. But we continue to believe that an agreement is possible and even essential, and we will continue to work tirelessly to achieve it,” he said in Doha.
According to a Hamas source, the proposal provides for a six-week truce during which Israel will have to release between 200 and 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for around 40 hostages, and 200 to 300 aid trucks will be able to enter the territory every day. . However, Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, demands a total ceasefire. Israel, for its part, continues to assert that it will only definitively end its offensive once the Islamist movement has been eliminated and the hostages freed.
At the end of November, a first one-week truce allowed the increased entry of humanitarian aid, and around a hundred hostages held in Gaza were exchanged for Palestinians held by Israel. Some 250 people were kidnapped on October 7, and 132 hostages remain held in Gaza, according to Israel. Among them, twenty-eight were declared dead by the services of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Some 8,000 people were evacuated on Monday from Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younes, surrounded by fighting, but around 300 others are still there, the Red Cross said on Tuesday. “The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is more than catastrophic,” said a spokesperson for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, Tommaso Della Longa, during a press briefing in Geneva. “There are currently still around 100 elderly and disabled people who have not been able to leave the hospital, 80 patients and 100 staff and volunteers. They are still inside,” he said.
Khan Younes, the main town in southern Gaza, which, according to Israel, is home to leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement, has largely been transformed into a field of ruins. For more than two weeks, explained Mr. Della Longa, Al-Amal hospital has been “hit several times,” including on Friday February 2, causing the death of the head of the youth and volunteers department of the Palestinian Red Crescent. .
The conflict in Gaza has spread across the region, with tensions between Israel on one side and Iran and allied groups on the other, including the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and the Houthis, Yemeni rebels.
The Houthis said Tuesday they targeted American and British ships off Yemen in two separate attacks that add to multiple others that have disrupted global shipping in recent weeks.
American forces carried out a new strike on the night of Monday to Tuesday against the Houthis in Yemen, targeting two marine drones loaded with explosives, according to the American military command in the Middle East (Centcom). Since January, the United States has carried out several operations in Yemen and off the coast of this war-torn country, saying it wants to protect ships from Houthi attacks.
Yemeni rebels began targeting merchant shipping in November, saying they were targeting cargo ships linked to Israel, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. American and British ships were also designated as “legitimate targets” after initial strikes against Houthi positions.