FIERCE STREET BATTLES
Group of Seven foreign ministers said they supported “humanitarian pauses and corridors” in the Israel-Hamas war, but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.
China’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, said that Israeli and Palestinian people should not be the “targets of armed attacks or collective punishment”.
Speaking in Beijing, the ministry’s spokesperson Wang Wenbin expressed sympathies to the civilians in Gaza and appealed to the warring parties to hold a ceasefire and return to talks.
“Releasing civilian hostages, protecting the safety and security of civilians and civilian facilities, opening up humanitarian aid corridors and resuming dialogue and negotiations are the goals of the international community and the obligations of both sides,” Wang said.
Wang reiterated China’s support for the two-state solution and announced that the country would send its Middle East envoy Zhai Jun to a humanitarian conference for Gaza’s civilians that will open on Thursday in France.
As fighting intensifies in Gaza, families of people taken hostage by Hamas have been pushing on various fronts for help to bring their loved ones home.
“Every day is like eternity to me and I can’t wait any longer,” Doris Liber, whose 26-year-old son Guy Iluz was shot and taken hostage at a music festival, told reporters in Washington.
Military analysts warned of weeks of gruelling house-to-house fighting ahead in Gaza.
The operation is hugely complicated for Israel because of the hostages, including very young children and frail elderly people, who are believed to be held inside a vast tunnel network.
The Israeli army said it had uncovered around 130 tunnel entrances in Gaza. It also reported the deaths of two more soldiers, bringing to 33 the total number killed in the offensive.
Hamas released video footage of fierce street battles between its armed wing and Israeli forces in the northern and southern axis of Gaza City.
In densely packed Gaza – where more than 1.5 million people have fled their homes in a desperate search for safety – the suffering is immense.
Hamas said that several cemeteries in Gaza had “no more space for burials”, while OCHA said most of the territory’s sewage pumping stations were shut.
A rare delivery of emergency medical supplies and medicines on Wednesday reached Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the UN and World Health Organization said.
But they highlighted the delivery of life-saving supplies was only the second to reach the hospital since the war erupted and was “far from sufficient to respond to the immense needs”.
Tom Potokar, chief surgeon at the International Committee of the Red Cross who entered Gaza on Oct 27, described the scene at the European hospital in Khan Younis as “relentless” and “catastrophic”.
“In the last 24 hours, I’ve seen three patients with maggots in their wounds,” including a six-year-old child, he said in a telephone interview.
“It’s almost like you can’t find somebody who hasn’t lost members of their family” from among the patients and staff, he said, adding that there were “cases where you see a child come in where they have nobody, they’ve lost their whole family”.
Source: CNA
