Israel-Hamas conflict: the Jewish state increases its military pressure on northern Gaza from which its inhabitants are fleeing

Israel continued its preparations for an offensive in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, after granting residents additional time on Saturday to evacuate the area. As the bombings continued, thousands of Gazans fled to the south of the enclave, towards this border still hermetically closed by Egypt. Around “1 million people have been displaced by the war,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Sunday, with the WHO also concerned about the health consequences of such a population transfer.

Israeli strikes killed 2,450 people in the Gaza Strip, Gaza authorities said late Sunday afternoon. These strikes enabled the elimination of three senior Hamas military leaders, said the Israeli army, which notably announced that it had killed Ali Qadi, the leader of the commandos who led the attack against Israel on October 7. According to the latest figures provided by its army on Sunday, more than 1,300 people were killed in Israel during this Hamas attack. The army also “confirmed” that 126 hostages had been kidnapped, adding that the remains of some of them had been found during incursions into the Gaza Strip. For its part, Hamas claimed that 22 hostages had been killed in Israeli strikes.

Faced with the risk of regional conflagration, the United States announced on Saturday the sending of a second aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean. The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, continues his tour of the Middle East. “There is a risk of escalation of this conflict, of the opening of a second front in the north, and of course of the involvement of Iran,” said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser of the House -Blanche during an interview with CBS.

“Faced with the risk of conflagration in the region, it is essential that the international community sends converging messages to everyone so that the spirit of responsibility prevails,” declared the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, who was Sunday in Israel.

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One person was killed and others were injured on Sunday in northern Israel by fire from Lebanon, the Israeli army said, specifying that it had struck the territory of the neighboring country in retaliation. The army said on Saturday that it had killed “several terrorists” trying to infiltrate at this border. On Friday, a Reuters videographer was killed and six journalists from AFP, Reuters and al-Jazeera injured in bombings in southern Lebanon. The Israeli army also indicated that it had struck Syria with artillery on Saturday evening after air alerts in the part of the Golan Heights annexed by Israel in 1967.

“If the Zionist regime's attacks on the defenseless population of Gaza continue, no one can guarantee control of the situation and the prospect of a widening of the conflict,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said. received on Sunday by the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. The Iranian diplomat's tour also took him to Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.