Israel continues to bomb Gaza, mired in a serious humanitarian situation and cut off from the world, without telephone or internet, on the 99th day of the war.
Fears that the conflict will spread to the region soared again after the United States and the United Kingdom bombed positions of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, allies of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in response to their attacks on boats in the Red Sea.
On Saturday, a new US airstrike was reported in Yemen, with a view, according to Washington, to “restoring stability in the Red Sea”, through which 12% of world trade transits.
In Gaza, witnesses reported Israeli bombings early Saturday. The day before, the telephone and internet network was out of service again. Israel has been bombing the Palestinian enclave for more than three months in its war against Hamas, which governs that Palestinian territory.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the telecommunications disruption was hampering its efforts to help the injured.
Incessant Israeli bombing of Gaza has killed at least 23,708 people, mostly women and minors, according to the latest figures from the Hamas Health Ministry.
The conflict broke out on October 7, with the incursion into Israel by Hamas militiamen who killed around 1,140 people, according to a balance established by AFP based on Israeli data.
The militants also kidnapped about 250 people, about a hundred of whom were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners during a week-long humanitarian truce in late November.
The UN lamented the increasing difficulties in aid operations in the north of the Strip and accused the Israeli army of limiting the supply of fuel, used mainly in hospitals.
In central Gaza, a lack of fuel forced the main generator of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el Balah to shut down, the Ministry of Health reported. “Doesn’t anyone care about us? Why is everyone silent?” asked a Gazan who was crying for a deceased relative in a hospital.
In the occupied West Bank, Israelis killed three fighters who “infiltrated” a Jewish settlement, according to the army.
Soldiers searched the area and “three attackers were identified and neutralized by security forces.” The Palestinian Wafa agency indicated that one of the deceased was 19 years old and the other two were 16.
Since the war broke out in Gaza, violence in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has skyrocketed, with at least 337 people killed by Israeli troops or settlers, according to the Health Ministry in Ramallah.