Israel, which said it recovered the bodies of three other hostages killed by Hamas, believes around 20 of more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza are dead.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had bombed a building in Jabalia from the air after its forces came under fire and Hamas militants were seen on the roof. It was unclear if the building was one of those that WAFA said had been hit.
The military also said it had killed militants holed up in two school buildings in Gaza City, and raided apartments in Khan Younis stocked with weapons, uncovering what it described as underground infrastructure used by Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza and that Israel has vowed to destroy.
“Every day the situation gets worse. Food gets less, water gets worse, only death, fear and destruction get greater,” said Samira, 40, a mother of four, who is displaced in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt.
“I can’t handle the children anymore. They’re terrified and so am I. Every night we think it might be our last night. The bombing doesn’t stop,” she told Reuters by phone.
With intense fighting across the Gaza Strip and aid organisations warning of a humanitarian catastrophe, the United States has said Israel risks losing international support with “indiscriminate” air strikes.
In a surprise cross-border attack on Oct 7, Hamas militants rampaged through Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and capturing 240 hostages. Israel’s counterattack has killed close to 19,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities, with thousands more feared buried under rubble.
COMBAT INTENSIFIES
Combat has intensified in the past two weeks since the collapse of a week-long truce that had allowed dozens of hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli and Qatari officials were set to meet in Norway on Saturday in an effort to revive talks about the release of hostages in Gaza in return for a ceasefire and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In signs of the wider ramifications of the conflict, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis said they had attacked the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat with a swarm of drones, one of several drone incidents reported in the region on Saturday.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes over the past two months, many several times.
Source: CNA
