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Israel launches strikes on Rafah ahead of Gaza truce push
Deadly strikes were reported early Saturday in the overcrowded Gaza border town of Rafah – dubbed a “pressure cooker of despair” by the UN – as international mediators readied a new push to seal a tentative truce deal between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Read our blog to see how the day’s events unfolded.
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This blog is no longer being updated. For more coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, please click here.
Summary:
- Syria’s foreign ministry on Saturday condemned overnight retaliatory US air strikes against more than 85 targets in Syria and Iraq linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the militias it backs. “What (the US) committed has served to fuel conflict in the Middle East in a very dangerous way,” Damascus’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
- The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 27,238 people have been killed and 66,452 wounded in Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7. Israeli officials say about 1,140 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel. Militant fighters took some 250 hostages during the attack and 132 are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
Yesterday’s key developments:
- The US military on Friday said it launched air strikes on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias in apparent retaliation for the deadly drone strike that killed three US soldiers in Jordan last Sunday.
- The United Nations said on Friday it estimates that at least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip have been left unaccompanied or separated nearly four months into the war.
- Hamas’s health ministry in Gaza said 105 people were killed overnight from Thursday to Friday, while the group’s press office reported raids and shelling around Khan Younis – southern Gaza’s main city and the recent epicentre of hostilities.
- Hamas officials said on Friday that the group is studying a proposed ceasefire deal that would include prolonged pauses in fighting in Gaza and swaps of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, but at the same time appeared to rule out some of its key components. The multi-stage proposal that officials from Egypt, Israel, Qatar and the United States put forth this week does not include a permanent ceasefire.
Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of “Israeli aggression”.
The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
For more on the Gaza health ministry’s tolls, click here.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)
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- Israel
- Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- Hamas
- Israel-Hamas war
- Gaza Strip