AFP, Sputnik and Reuters

The newspaper La Jornada
Friday, July 26, 2024, p. 25

Gaza. Israeli forces continued to advance into some towns in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza yesterday, leaving at least 30 dead and 146 wounded, the Gazan health ministry said.

The army carried out attacks in Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north of the Palestinian territory, where nine people were killed, and in Al Bureij in the centre, leaving seven wounded, most of them children, according to medical sources.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s troops also continued their operations in Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south. Israeli warplanes attacked civilians sitting near their homesfive of whom were killed, said Ahmed Kahlut, local civil defense director in Beit Lahia.

According to witnesses, soldiers blew up apartment blocks in Tal Al Sultan, a neighborhood west of Rafah, and in Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Yunis, where gunfire was reported from military vehicles. The army said it had targeted more than 60 Hamas infrastructure facilities in the 24 hours prior to its report, Israel’s press office said.

Thousands of Palestinians fled the bombing once again, following army evacuation orders in several parts of Gaza. With nowhere to go, families took refuge on the street or, as in Khan Yunis, near a cemetery.

The army said the bodies of the five hostages recovered the day before were found in a tunnel dug by Hamas.

Maya Goren, a 56-year-old kindergarten teacher, was killed in the attack on her kibbutz, Nir Oz, according to Israeli Army Radio, one of the communities hardest hit in the deadly Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that sparked the devastating war. The four other hostages were Ravid Katz and Oren Goldin, who lived on a kibbutz near Gaza, and soldiers Tomer Ahimas and Kiril Brodski, who were killed in combat that day, the army said. Their bodies were recovered in Khan Yunis.

The five were among 120 hostages still held in Gaza, a third of whom have been declared dead by Israel. The Hostage Families Forum, which has been lobbying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for months, accused him of sabotage efforts to free their loved ones. A total of 39,175 Palestinians have been killed and 90,403 wounded or maimed since the beginning of the war.