Israel-Hamas war: Dozens of Palestinians killed in northern Gaza, Israeli army says

The Israeli military claimed on Tuesday to have killed dozens of Palestinian militants in northern Gaza.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said its troops killed the Palestinian militants around the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and also uncovered about 100 rocket launchers.

“During IDF activity in the area of Beit Lahia, the troops located approximately 100 rocket set-installations and 60 ready-to-use rockets. The troops killed dozens of terrorists during the activity,” it said.

The Israeli military also said on Tuesday its special forces had carried out a strike in the area of Ayta ash Shab in Lebanon.

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“IDF special forces struck in order to remove a threat in the area of Ayta ash Shab in Lebanon,” the military said.

Elsewhere, the military said its aircraft struck an anti-tank missile launcher in southern Lebanon that belonged to the Iranian-backed group Hizbullah.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told a news conference on Monday that an “intense manoeuvring stage” due to last around three months “will end soon” in southern Gaza.

He said the stage was already being reached in northern Gaza, with Israel’s army confirming one of its four divisions in the territory has completed its withdrawal on Monday.

The army had stepped up operations and bombardments in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in recent weeks after saying Hamas’s military structures in the north had been dismantled.

But Israel is facing heavy international pressure over Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and the growing number of civilian casualties, with the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry reporting 60 deaths in overnight bombardments Sunday into Monday.

Qatar’s prime minister offered a stinging criticism of Israel and the international community on Tuesday over the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as Qatar’s foreign minister, said a two-state solution is required to end the conflict and warned that Hamas’s October 7th attack and the Israeli response shows the region cannot go back to the way it was before.

“Gaza is not there anymore. I mean, there is nothing over there,” he told a panel meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s carpet bombing everywhere.”

He also brought up the ongoing tensions in the West Bank, which have also seen Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, and urged an end to Palestinian divisions.

“We cannot have a two-state solution without having a government and politicians in Israel who believe in co-existing together side by side peacefully and we cannot have all this ongoing without ending this war,” he said.

Requiring Israel to agree to a time-bound, mandatory path to a two-state solution is key to future stability in Israel and the Palestinian territories, Mr Al Thani said, adding the Palestinians must be the ones to decide if the Hamas movement that runs Gaza will continue to play a political role in the future.

Aid officials in Gaza believe that pockets of famine already exist in the territory, with parents sacrificing remaining food for their children and fuel for cooking almost impossible to find.

UN agencies have said that Gaza urgently needs more humanitarian assistance as Palestinian authorities reported that the death toll in the territory during the Israeli offensive there had risen to more than 24,000.

The World Food Programme, Unicef and the World Health Organisation said in a joint statement that new entry routes needed to be opened to Gaza, more trucks needed to be allowed in each day, and aid workers and those seeking aid needed to be allowed to move around safely.

The UN agencies did not directly blame Israel but said aid delivery was hindered by the opening of too few border crossings from Israel, a slow vetting process for trucks and goods going into Gaza, and continuing fighting.

Doctors in Gaza said children, weakened by lack of food, had died from hypothermia and that several newborn babies with mothers who were undernourished had not survived for more than a few days. – Agencies