Cnn
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The Israeli army intensified operations across Gaza on Thursday, killing more than 100 people and is committed to continuing to bomb like US President Donald Trump suggested establishing a “zone of freedom” in the enclave.
Many victims were in Jabalya in the north of Gaza and Khan Younis in the south, according to the civil defense of Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is committed to eradicating Hamas with a strategy that would see that the military hold more territory in Gaza and push the entire civilian population in a smaller area in the south.
“There will be no range,” said Netanyahu earlier this month. “We will call up the upcoming reserves, to hold a territory – we will not enter and then leave the area, only to make raids thereafter.”
Intensified Israeli attacks occur in the midst of what seems to be growing differences between American and Israeli governments. President Donald Trump said last week that he wanted the end of the “brutal war” in Gaza and jumped Israel during his tour in the Middle East. He also bypassed Israel twice this month in bilateral agreements concluded with regional militant groups. Hamas released an Israeli hostage last week, and the Houthis agreed to stop shooting American ships in the Red Sea while committing to continuing to fight Israel.
Trump on Wednesday denied that Israel had been sidelined. “It’s good for Israel,” he said.
But on Thursday, he said he wanted the United States to “take” Gaza and transform it into a “zone of freedom”.
“I have concepts for Gaza which, I think, are very good, make it an area of freedom, that the United States gets involved and just make a freedom of freedom,” Trump told Qatar.
The latest Israeli operations came while the Palestinian Ministry of Health has announced that the number killed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza since October 2023 now exceeds 53,000.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for civil defense, said: “We are currently pointing out more than 100 martyrs in the Gaza Strip (Thursday), from Khan Younis to Northern Gaza.”
Basal said that a family of six, including four children, had been killed in Jabalya. The father was a nurse at Kamal Adwan hospital, according to the hospital.
He said that an Israeli bombardment also killed 13 people in a Jabalya clinic where a large number of Gazans had gathered. Al Awda Hospital said it had been injured after the clinic’s strike.
CNN asked the Israel Defense forces (FDI) to comment on the scored strike.
In Khan Younis, 11 family members were killed on an air strike in a house, according to a Stringer CNN who visited the scene. A teenager, Ahmad al-Safi, who had been moved to Northern Gaza, told CNN: “I was sleeping and I thought the house had fallen on us. I went to a state of shock … I thought I was a martyr. ”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported on Thursday that 82 bodies had been received in Gaza hospitals in the last 24 hours, as well as 152 injured. He said the number killed following Israeli military operations since October 2023 had increased to 53,010. The ministry did not difference between civilians and activists. In January, the FDI said it had killed 20,000 Hamas agents since October 7.
The FDIs continue to issue evacuation orders for different parts of Gaza. The last one was addressed to people in the Rimal district on the Central Gaza coast on Wednesday. TSAhal Arabic language spokesman said that on X, the order was due to “Hamas terrorist activities in the region”, adding that it “also bombed the region and will continue to target it today and in the coming days”.
The United Nations agencies express the alarm to worsen the situation of civilians.
The United Nations Bureau for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published Thursday X that “the blockade, travel orders and current bombings – including tents, hospitals and schools – continue to make mass victims, trips and deprivation.”
He quoted a study of the United Nations this week by warning that with “the persistent inability of humanitarian agencies to access populations with an urgent need, an escalation planned in hostilities and the continuous mass displacement of people, the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip is not only possible – it is more and more likely.”
“ We are destroying more and more houses ”
The Israeli government has not been influenced by an increasing wave of international criticisms on the blockade on aid to Gaza, now in its third month.
Netanyahu said earlier this week: “We are destroying more and more houses, they have nowhere to come back. The only inevitable result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Gaza Strip”, a goal that Trump had supported shortly after he entered.
Negotiations on a new ceasefire that would see the remaining hostages released seem to have blocked. The Qatari Prime Minister told CNN on Wednesday that he does not expect to see the progress soon in the negotiations that his country media, criticizing Israel for having sent a “bad signal” by continuing to bomb the enclave while sending a delegation to talks to Doha.
Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Bin Jassim Al Thani told Becky Anderson de CNN that he had seen the release of the Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander this week as a “breakthrough that will help bring back the talks on the right track”.
But he added: “Unfortunately, Israel’s reaction was (bombarding) the next day, while sending the delegation.” He accused Israel of “essentially sending the signal that (they) are not interested in negotiations”.
An Israeli official told CNN on Thursday that there had been no progress in talks in Doha, who were still underway.
Israel wants to extend the first phase of the agreement to continue the exchange of hostages, living and deceased, in exchange for new versions of Palestinian prisoners and the aid flow in Gaza – but without any commitment to end the war.
Hamas said Thursday that while mediators were working to “bring the negotiations back on the right track”, Israel made mass bombing “in a desperate attempt to impose terms under fire”.
Hamas also said it expected: “According to the understanding of the American side and with the knowledge of the mediators, this humanitarian aid will immediately begin to enter the Gaza Strip, (and) calling for a permanent ceasefire”, after his release from Alexander.
He added that “the inability to carry out these stages, in particular the introduction of humanitarian assistance to our people, will throw a negative shadow on any effort to carry out negotiations on the process of exchange of prisoners”.
