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On the 111th day of the war between Israel and Hamas, Thursday January 25, fighting remains concentrated in the town of Khan Yunis, located in the south of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army, which announced on Tuesday that it had “surrounded” the city, claims that officials from the Palestinian Islamist movement are there. The Hamas health ministry reported on Thursday fifty people killed in the last twenty-four hours in Khan Younes, where the Israeli army assured that its snipers had killed several “terrorists”.
The aircraft targeted Hamas members in the central and northern Gaza Strip and other fighters were killed in “close combat,” the Israeli army added in a statement.
At the same time, Qatar, Egypt and the United States are currently trying to mediate in order to reach a new, longer truce in Gaza, including the release of hostages and prisoners. But, in a recording obtained by Israeli channel 12, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered the mediator role of Qatar, the country where the political leadership of Hamas is established, “problematic”.
“I have no illusions about them. They have ways of putting pressure [on Hamas]. And why ? Because they finance them,” Mr. Netanyahu said in Hebrew, according to this recording. Qatar said it was “dismayed” by these statements attributed to the leader, accusing them of “hindering and undermining the mediation process, for reasons that appear to serve his political career more” than the “Israeli hostages,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs underlined during the night.
The day after the strikes on a structure of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, the death toll rose to thirteen, the institution announced on Thursday January 25 . An initial report showed nine deaths on Wednesday.
The Israeli army for its part declared that a “thorough examination of the operations of the forces present in the vicinity [was] underway”, without ruling out the possibility of a Hamas strike. It is nevertheless the only force in the Gaza Strip to deploy tanks. On Thursday, an UNRWA spokesperson told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Israel had demanded an evacuation of the camp. This was denied by the Israeli army on Thursday evening. “No specific evacuation request has been communicated to UNRWA or to those remaining in the vicinity” of the shelter, she said. At the same time, she published orders on social networks to evacuate areas of Khan Younes where telecommunications are limited and where fighting has intensified in recent days.
The Palestinian Islamist organization on Thursday accused Israel of killing twenty civilians and injuring 150 others as they queued to receive humanitarian aid outside Gaza City.
“The Israeli occupation has committed another massacre against thousands of hungry mouths,” said Hamas health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra. Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian movement, spoke of “artillery shells and rockets.” For its part, the Israeli army has not confirmed this information.
Speaking at a meeting of the executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO), Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, on Thursday accused the institution of “collusion” with the Hamas. In a violent charge, the ambassador claimed that “the WHO knew that hostages were being held in hospitals and that terrorists were operating there.”
Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals to carry out attacks and hide tunnels and weapons, which the movement denies. “These are undeniable facts that the WHO has chosen to ignore time and time again. This is not about incompetence. This is collusion,” denounced Ms. Shahar. In every hospital that “the IDF [the Israeli army] searched [in the] Gaza Strip, they found evidence that it was being used for terrorist purposes by Hamas,” she added. on social network
A 42nd Frenchman has been identified among those killed in Israel by Hamas during the bloody attack of October 7, 2023, the French Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday.
“Unfortunately, we are forced to increase the number of French victims of the attacks [of October 7, 2023] to forty-two. We recently learned that a dual national, whose French nationality we were unaware of, was among the victims,” declared a spokesperson for the Quai d’Orsay during a press briefing. He gave no indication of the age of the victim or the circumstances of his death and recalled that three French people remained “still hostages in the Gaza Strip”.