Israel intensified bombings in Gaza’s south on Wednesday, anticipating the delivery of medicine for detainees in exchange for humanitarian aid under a recently negotiated agreement.
An AFP correspondent in Khan Yunis, the southern Gaza Strip’s largest city, reported that air strikes and artillery fire continued throughout the night.
“It was the most difficult and intense night in Khan Yunis since the start of the war,” claimed Gaza’s Hamas leadership, whose health ministry reported 81 deaths across the Palestinian territory.
Fighting has raged in Gaza since Hamas launched unprecedented strikes on Israel on October 7, killing approximately 1,140 Palestinians, according to an AFP calculation based on official Israeli data.
According to the Gaza health ministry, Israeli bombardments and ground assaults have killed at least 24,448 Palestinians, with over 70% being women, young children, and teenagers.
During the October 7 strikes, Hamas and other terrorists took over 250 captives, and approximately 132 remain in Gaza, including at least 27 who are thought to have been slain.
The fate of those still held captive has gripped Israeli society, while a larger humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, characterized by the prospect of starvation and disease, has fueled worldwide calls for a ceasefire.
Medicine for hostages
Qatar and France mediated the accord announced on Tuesday, which allows medications and aid to reach hostages in the beleaguered Palestinian territories.
Qatar’s foreign ministry stated that the deal involves supplying medicine and humanitarian aid to residents in Gaza in return for medication needed by Israeli hostages.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the agreement, under which 45 hostages are due to get medication.
The International Committee of the Red Cross hailed the agreement, calling it “a much-needed moment of relief”.
A security source in Egypt claimed a Qatari jet carrying pharmaceuticals arrived on Wednesday at El-Arish, near the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
France stated that the pharmaceuticals will be sent to a hospital in Rafah, where they would be handed over to the Red Cross and separated into batches before being distributed to the hostages.
During a November ceasefire brokered by Qatar, which hosts the group’s political headquarters, Hamas exchanged dozens of hostages for Palestinian captives detained by Israel.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he hoped Qatar-brokered discussions would result in another such agreement “soon.”
‘Why are they doing this?’
At the Abu Yussef Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, Palestinians stood in front of bodies wrapped in shrouds, mourning the loss of loved ones killed in an overnight Israeli strike.
“Why are they doing this? They are destroying us,” Umm Muhammad Abu Odeh, a woman displaced from the north Gaza town of Beit Hanun, told AFP.
The Israelis “told us to go south, and we came here… but there is no safe place in Gaza, neither in the north, nor in the south, nor the middle.
“Everything is being struck. Everywhere is dangerous.”
According to the United Nations, the war has displaced almost 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people, forcing many to cram into shelters and fight for food, water, fuel, and medical care.
On Tuesday night, anti-war protestors clashed with police in Tel Aviv, with some holding placards reading “End the siege” and “Stop the genocide”.
“Civilians are getting killed by the Israeli bombings,” said protester Michal Sapri. “It leads to nothing. Our hostages are still there. We’re not going to release them (through) more military power.”
The Israeli public has maintained enormous pressure on Netanyahu’s government to obtain the release of the hostages, with officials continually stressing that military pressure is required to achieve any sort of agreement.
On Tuesday, an Israeli kibbutz confirmed the deaths of two hostages in Gaza, as stated by Hamas in a video.
West Bank violence
Violence has also increased in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since October 7, reaching levels not seen since the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, between 2000 and 2005.
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said that an Israeli strike killed four civilians in Tulkarem, in the north of the Palestinian territories.
Separately, the Israeli army said it killed a leading Palestinian militant in an air strike in the West Bank, averting a “terrorist attack” he had planned.
An AFP correspondent spotted a mound of wreckage and the twisted remnants of a car hit by the strike near the Balata camp in the northern city of Nablus.
According to an AFP calculation based on information from both sides, Israeli army incursions and settlers’ attacks in the region have killed approximately 350 people.
Fears are growing that the Israel-Hamas confrontation will spark a regional war, with increasing violence including Iran-backed Hamas supporters.
The US military said it launched more attacks in Yemen on Tuesday, after the country’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels claimed another missile attack on a cargo ship in the Red Sea.
It happened just days after the US and UK bombarded scores of targets in Huthi-controlled Yemen in retaliation to rebel attacks, which claim to be targeting Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza.
Also on Tuesday, Israel’s army targeted Hezbollah sites in Lebanon, with a security source claiming the attacks were “the most intense” on a single region since the Hamas-aligned militants first began exchanging cross-border fire with Israel following the start of the Gaza conflict.
Meanwhile, Iran, which supports both the Huthis and Hezbollah, launched a missile attack in Iraq’s Kurdistan area against what its Revolutionary Guards claimed was an Israeli spy headquarters and a “gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups”.