Israel carried out intense bombardments on the besieged Gaza Strip on Monday, November 6. International efforts are being stepped up to deliver humanitarian aid to the population of the enclave.
Israeli forces pushed on with intense strikes targeting Palestinian militants in Gaza on Monday as the war neared one month and the Hamas-run health ministry’s death toll passed 10,000 inside the besieged territory.
Determined to destroy Hamas whose October 7 attack left 1,400 dead in Israel and saw over 240 hostages taken, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed no letup despite mounting international calls for a ceasefire.
Ground Invasion Continues
Ground forces have flooded the northern half of the Gaza Strip and tightened an encirclement of Gaza City even as hundreds of thousands of civilians remain there despite Israeli evacuation orders.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said Monday more than 200 people had died in “overnight massacres” — a day after reporting a total death toll of more than 9,770, mostly women and children.
The heads of major United Nations agencies issued a joint statement calling for a ceasefire inside the territory of 2.4 million people where an Israeli siege has cut off most water, food and fuel supplies.
Israel’s army said Monday it had pounded Gaza with “significant” new strikes, having earlier said it had already hit over 12,000 targets.
Israeli troops and Hamas fighters have engaged in house-to-house combat in densely populated Gaza, where the war has sent 1.5 million people fleeing to other parts of the territory.
Shortly before the latest barrage of strikes, internet and telephone lines were cut, the army said.
Israel has distributed leaflets and sent text messages ordering Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to head south, but a US official said Saturday at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-hit areas.
Diplomatic Efforts
Blinken on his regional tour — which took him to the occupied West Bank, Cyprus and Iraq on Sunday, before landing in Turkey on Monday — has called for “humanitarian pauses” while rejecting Arab countries’ demands for a ceasefire.
Meeting with Blinken in the West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas denounced “the genocide and destruction suffered by our Palestinian people in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s war machine”.
In Iran, the arch foe of Israel and the United States, President Ebrahim Raisi on Monday charged that US President Joe Biden’s administration was “encouraging” Israel to “kill and commit cruel acts” against Palestinians.
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Jerusalem knife attack
Deepening the desperation in the crowded territory, the sole border crossing into Gaza from Egypt was closed Sunday for a second day.
Hamas suspended the evacuations of foreign passport holders after saying Israel had refused to allow some wounded Palestinians to be evacuated.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed the closure, saying more than 1,100 people had been allowed out in the two previous days.
The war has exacerbated tensions in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and settlers since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
In Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, a female Israeli soldier was “seriously” wounded on Monday in a knife attack before “border police forces neutralised the terrorist by shooting”, police said.
The Israeli military said Monday it had arrested Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, 22, in a raid in her West Bank town of Nabi Salih on suspicion of “inciting violence and terrorist activities”.
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Malo Pinatel, with AFP
