The war between Israel and Hamas entered its 70th day on Friday, since the bloody and unprecedented attack perpetrated by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip on October 7, which triggered it.
According to Israel, 1,139 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attack and around 250 kidnapped and taken to Gaza. A total of 129 hostages remain in Gaza, including bodies, according to the army. Around a hundred people were released as part of a truce at the end of November in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners incarcerated by Israel.
After the attack on 7 October, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas, pounding the Palestinian territory, laying siege to it and conducting a vast ground operation since 27 October.
The Gaza Ministry of Health reported on Friday that 18,800 people had died in the Israeli bombardments, most of them women, children and teenagers.
Here are the latest developments:
Killed Hostages Waved White Flag
The three hostages killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza were shot even as they carried a white flag and cried for help in Hebrew, an army official said.
The army said earlier it was investigating after its troops killed the hostages — Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer El-Talalqa.
“They’re all without shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it,” an army official briefing journalists said, asking not to be named.
A soldier saw them and “feels threatened and opens fire”, the official said.
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Tel Aviv Demonstrations
The families of hostages held in Gaza called on Israel Saturday to make an urgent deal to secure their release after the army admitted “mistakenly” killing three captives in the Palestinian territory.
Their deaths have sparked protests in Israel.
“All we get again and again are dead hostages… Take us into consideration and come up with a plan now (for negotiation),” Noam Perry, daughter of hostage Haim Perry, said at an event in Tel Aviv organised by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
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Christians Shot Dead
An Israeli soldier on Saturday shot dead a Christian mother and daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in Gaza City, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said.
In a statement, it said a military sniper murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza,” the Palestinian territory’s only Catholic church, where families had been sheltering from the war.
The army did not immediately comment.
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Funeral for Journalist
Dozens of journalists took part in a funeral for an Al Jazeera cameraman killed in an Israeli strike in south Gaza.
Samer Abu Daqqa was reporting from a school in Khan Yunis when he was hit by a drone strike on Friday, said the Qatar-based channel.
His colleague, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, was wounded.
Escalating Regional Tension
An American destroyer on Saturday shot down more than a dozen drones in the Red Sea launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said.
British Defence Minister Grant Shapps said earlier that a Royal Navy destroyer had also brought down a suspected attack drone in the Red Sea overnight Friday-Saturday.
Two more major shipping firms, the Italian-Swiss Mediterranean Shipping Company and France’s CMA CGM, said on Saturday they were suspending passage through a Red Sea strait vital for global trade after Yemeni rebel attacks.
The Houthis have said they are targeting shipping near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to put pressure on Israel.
The Israeli army said Saturday that a soldier was killed on the Lebanese border by a “hostile aircraft” — the seventh to be killed there since October 7.
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Malo Pinatel, with AFP
