Israel escalated its bombardment of targets in the Gaza Strip, the military said yesterday, ahead of an expected ground invasion against Hamas militants that the US fears could spark a wider conflict in the region, including attacks on US troops.
The stepped-up attacks, and the rapidly rising death toll of thousands killed in Gaza, came as Hamas released two elderly Israeli women who were among the hundreds of hostages it captured during its devastating Oct. 7 attack on towns in southern Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday arrived in Tel Aviv, meeting with the families of French citizens who were killed or held hostage before heading to talks with top Israeli officials.
Photo: AP
He told them that he came “to express our support and solidarity and share your pain,” as well as to assure Israel it is “not left alone in the war against terrorism.”
In a joint news conference with Macron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would make every effort to fight the war quickly, “but it could be a long war.”
Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the attack. A third small aid convoy entered Gaza on Monday carrying only a tiny fraction of the supplies aid groups say is necessary.
Photo: AP
Tamira Alrifai, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said the 54 trucks that entered Gaza over the past several days was a “trickle” compared with the 500 trucks a day that entered before the war.
She said UN negotiators were “very, very far away” from getting an agreement to send the sustained aid into Gaza that is needed.
Israel yesterday said it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting militants as they were preparing to launch rockets into Israel, and striking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. The previous day, Israel reported 320 strikes.
The Palestinian official news agency, WAFA, said many of the airstrikes hit residential buildings, some of them in southern Gaza where Israel had told civilians to take shelter.
An overnight strike hit a four-story residential building in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing at least 32 people and wounding scores of others, survivors said.
On Monday night, the two freed hostages, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, were taken out of Gaza at the Rafah crossing into Egypt, where they were put into ambulances.
The women, along with their husbands, who were not released, were snatched from their homes in the kibbutz of Nir Oz.
Lifshitz told reporters that the militants beat her with sticks, bruising her ribs and making it hard to breathe as they kidnapped her. They drove her into Gaza, then forced her to walk several kilometers on wet ground to reach a network of tunnels that looked like a spider web, she said.
Once there, though, her treatment improved, she said.
The people assigned to guard her “told us they are people who believe in the Koran and wouldn’t hurt us,” she said.
Lifshitz said conditions were kept clean, she received medical care, and was given the same one meal a day of cheese and cucumber that her captors had.
The women were freed days after an American woman and her teenage daughter were released. Hamas and other militants in Gaza are believed to have taken about 220 people, including an unconfirmed number of foreigners and dual citizens.
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