![]() The Israeli strikes continued early Saturday, with one killing seven people in a house in Gaza City, news agencies reported. Early Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This operation will continue as long as it takes to restore peace and security to the state of Israel.” Israel deployed as many as 160 aircraft at a time in the overnight attacks, a military spokesman said. Israeli forces said their main target was the tunnel network used by Hamas to move people and weapons, and they claimed to have killed 75 Hamas operatives since Monday. More than 2,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza this week, and eight Israelis, including a soldier, have been killed, Israeli officials said on Friday.Ī Hamas spokesman told Al Jazeera on Friday that the group was open to a “calming” of hostilities, and that Egypt and Qatar were leading efforts to mediate with Israel.īut the rocket barrage appeared to slow overnight, as Israeli jets and drones once again pounded targets in the territory, joined for the first time by artillery stationed at its perimeter. Most of the death and destruction have occurred in Gaza, the already impoverished territory controlled by the militant Palestinian group Hamas, where officials said more than 120 people had died, including 31 children, scores of buildings were destroyed, and electricity water were running critically short. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesĪfter another night of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, Palestinians and Israelis on Friday surveyed a landscape marred by violence that has spread from the West Bank to Israel to Gaza and back to the West Bank, leaving scores dead, mostly Palestinians. Hundreds of Palestinians woke up to destruction on Friday morning after Israel bombed parts of the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Health Ministry on Friday called on Israel to open a border crossing for patients to receive treatment and medical personnel and supplies to enter. The lack of power was starting to affect hospitals, which were already at full capacity because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Gisha group said. Elad Goren, said on Wednesday, “it’s focusing on violence and incitement.” “Instead of focusing on welfare and economy,” the head of the agency’s civil department, Col. Those who could afford it turned to diesel generators to cover the gap.Įager to push back on the idea that Israel alone is responsible for Gazans’ deteriorating living conditions, senior officials at the Israeli defense agency that deals with the West Bank and Gaza,, known as COGAT, said that Hamas was using Gaza residents as a “human shield.” Before the current conflict, that left the area perpetually short of half to two-thirds of its power needs, meaning residents had no more than eight consecutive hours of electricity, according to Gisha, a Gaza-focused advocacy group. Gaza usually gets roughly a quarter of its electricity from Israel, with another portion coming from a power plant in the territory that relies on fuel from Israel, plus donated fuel from Qatar and aid groups. About 150,000 people in Gaza City had limited access to water because the power cuts were affecting the piped supply, the agency added. The official said that the power lines to two Gaza sewage treatment plants were damaged or down, and the U.N.’s humanitarian aid coordination agency said that a water desalination plant was not operational, cutting 250,000 residents off from water. That claim could not be independently confirmed. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of briefing rules, said the shortages were partly because Israel has closed the border crossing through which most of Gaza’s fuel arrives, but also because Hamas, the militant group that governs the area, shot off rockets that damaged power lines. Now, they are down to about five hours of electricity per day and half their usual water supply, according to an Israeli security official. Suhaib Salem/Reutersīefore the current crisis, Gazans already lived in what one United Nations human rights official called a “toxic slum”: a jagged strip of land blockaded indefinitely by Israel and Egypt whose roughly two million residents endured daily power outages of up to 16 hours and running water that worked only every other day. A Palestinian electricity worker examines a building destroyed by Israeli air strikes on Thursday in Gaza City.
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