The Israeli army carried out new deadly strikes Thursday on the Gaza Strip, besieged and devastated by more than six months of war, with UN chief Antonio Guterres deploring a “humanitarian hell” in the Palestinian territory.
The same day, the United States and Great Britain strengthened their sanctions against Iran, which launched a drone and missile attack on Israeli territory on April 13 after a deadly strike attributed to Israel against the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Israeli leaders have threatened to respond to this first ever direct attack by Iran against its archenemy. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Iran would make Israel “regret” any attack on its territory.
Faced with fears of a regional conflagration, alarming declarations have increased while the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, triggered by an attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 against Israeli territory, knows no respite.
The Middle East is “on the precipice” of “widespread regional conflict”, Mr. Guterres warned before the Security Council.
“We are on the verge of a war in the Middle East which will send shock waves through the rest of the world,” warned the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell.
On Thursday, Israeli strikes again targeted the small strip of land besieged by Israel since October 9 and where the majority of 2.4 million inhabitants are threatened with famine according to the UN.
In the last 24 hours, at least 71 additional deaths have been recorded in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll, mainly civilians, to 33,970 since October 7, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“We recovered the remains of 12 people,” said Abdeljabbar al-Arja after searching the rubble of a house hit by a strike in Rafah, where 1.5 million people, most of them displaced, are crowded together.
“There were women and children, we found arms and feet. They were all torn to pieces. It’s horrible,” he exclaimed.
“Death, destruction”
The Israeli army said it had struck dozens of “targets,” including “terrorists, observation posts and military structures,” in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas took power in 2007.
In the evening, the armed wing of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which fights alongside Hamas, claimed responsibility for rocket fire towards localities in southern Israel, near the Gaza Strip. Warning sirens sounded according to the army.
Israel’s campaign of intensive bombing, followed by a ground offensive, was triggered by the unprecedented attack on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrating from Gaza into southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people. , mostly civilians, according to an AFP report established based on official data.
More than 250 people were kidnapped during the attack and 129 remain held in Gaza, 34 of whom died according to Israeli officials.
“We have a responsibility together […] to move the region away from the precipice,” Mr. Guterres told the Security Council.
“Starting with Gaza” where “six and a half months of Israeli military operations have created a humanitarian hell,” he lamented, describing two million Palestinians enduring “death, destruction, denial of humanitarian aid vital.”
He reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
This article is originally published on .ledevoir.com
