Several Palestinian men and a teenager who were freed from five days of Israeli army detention in the Gaza Strip said today that soldiers beat them, gave them little water and often prevented them from using the toilet.
They told AP at a hospital in Deir el-Balah, in the central part of the Gaza Strip. Several of them had bruises on their bodies or deep cuts from handcuffs.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the alleged abuse.
According to AP, these people discovered what was happening after the increasingly frequent detention of Palestinians in neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip through which the army passes.
This Sunday, photos emerged of Israeli soldiers, alongside dozens of Palestinian men, on their knees, in nothing but their underwear, with their hands tied behind their backs and some blindfolded.
On Friday, an Israeli government spokesman said the detained Palestinians were being interrogated to determine whether they were linked to Hamas extremists.
Those freed today said they were pulled from a building in Gaza City's Shujai neighborhood, the scene of intense fighting in recent days.
One freed person said that the soldiers ordered them to go out into the street in their underwear and that they were then taken to the yard with their hands tied and left in a warehouse.
During the interrogation, they were beaten and forced to walk and sleep on rice, which caused them great pain.
Another acquitted said that people with diabetes, high blood pressure or heart problems were ignored when they asked to have their handcuffs removed.
The soldiers would ask the detainees if they were affiliated with Hamas, and if the answer was "no", then they would slap or kick them. After five days, they were released and told to go south.
(BETA)
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced today the deaths of five soldiers, including one who died of wounds sustained on October 7, when the war against Palestinian Hamas began, and four killed in fighting in the southern Gaza Strip over the weekend.
One of the dead is the nephew of the former Chief of the General Staff of Israel, now a member of the War Cabinet, Gadi Eisenkot, whose son was killed a few days ago also in Gaza.
The number of Israeli soldiers killed in the ground offensive against Hamas has increased to 97, according to Israeli media.
The Israeli army continued artillery and airstrikes on the Gaza Strip today, a day after the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
(BETA)
Israeli army commander Herzi Halevi claims that the Hamas network is disintegrating.
"We see terrorists surrendering - it's a sign that their network is falling apart, which is a sign that we have to apply more pressure," Halevi said during a meeting with soldiers, according to Reuters.
Israel's national security adviser said more than 7.000 Palestinian militants have been killed in the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
"This is a minimum estimate," said adviser Cači Hanegbi in an interview with Kanal 12.
He added that the number of those killed could be higher.
"However, we do not know everything about the collapsed sites and tunnels. This is a rough estimate," Hanegbi said.
He pointed out that it is impossible to say exactly how long the ongoing war will last, indicating that the United States of America has not given Israel a time frame, reports Reuters.
"The Americans have not set any deadline for the end of the operation in Gaza. Yesterday they denied setting a deadline. They understand that they cannot tell the IDF how much it needs to achieve its goals. They share the goals of returning the hostages and destroying Hamas, and they do not can set a date. That's why it's an accurate assessment that achieving the goals of the Gaza war can't be measured in weeks, and I'm not sure it can be measured in months," Hanegbi told Channel 12.
Hanegbi believes Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar will want Hamas to fight to the end.
He suggests that killing Sinwar could therefore be a key step towards both war aims — destroying Hamas in Gaza and returning the hostages.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he appreciated the United States' veto in the UN Security Council, blocking a request for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
13 members of the UN Security Council voted for the resolution with one abstention and one vote against.
"And other countries must understand that it is impossible to support the elimination of Hamas on the one hand, and on the other hand call for an end to the war, which will prevent the elimination of Hamas," Netanyahu said.
He said that Israel will continue the war.
"Therefore, Israel will continue our just war to eliminate Hamas and achieve the other goals of the war that we have set," the Israeli prime minister said, as reported by Reuters.
A new inspection system for aid to be delivered to Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing is being tested, but efforts to get permission for trucks to cross it are still ongoing, a senior United Nations official told Reuters, the agency reports.
Under the new system, trucks would arrive at the Kerem Shalom crossing, located on the border between Israel, Gaza and Egypt, for the first time from Jordan, before entering Gaza from Rafah, about three kilometers away.
However, Karl Skau, deputy executive director of the United Nations' World Food Program, said it should be ensured that trucks enter Gaza directly through Kerem Shalom to ease the worsening situation in the enclave.
Israel has so far rejected pleas from the United Nations and others to open Kerem Shalom, but both Tel Aviv and the international organization signaled Thursday that the border crossing could soon be opened to help in the process of delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
So far, limited amounts of aid have been delivered from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, which is ill-equipped to process large numbers of trucks.
The trucks had to travel more than 40 kilometers south to Egypt's border with Israel before returning to Rafah, causing delivery delays.
The process of testing the Kerem Shalom inspection system for trucks arriving from Jordan is underway, said Skau, who visited Gaza on Friday.
"We have preloaded our internal resources so that we have provided enough food in Egypt and Jordan that could be delivered to a million people a month. We are ready. The trucks are ready to go," said Skau, adding that the situation in Gaza is increasingly chaotic. .
"The question is how long this can last, because the humanitarian operation is failing," Skau said, adding that half the population is starving and nine out of 10 people have nothing to eat every day.
At least 17.700 Palestinians have been killed and 48.780 wounded in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7, Ashraf Al-Kidra, spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health, said today, according to Reuters.
The military spokesman of the Yemeni Houthis warned all shipping companies today not to cooperate with Israel, saying that they will be the target of attacks in the Red Sea, reports Reuters.
"If Gaza does not get the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will be targeted by our armed forces," said Yahya Sari, announcing a ban on all ships on their way to Israel.
The Iran-aligned Houthis are firing on Israel and ships in the Red Sea in a campaign they say is aimed at supporting the Palestinians. American warships shot down several of their missiles.
The US State Department has approved the potential sale of tanks and related equipment to Israel for an estimated $106,5 million (about EUR 98 million), the Pentagon announced today, Reuters reports.
The sale will be from US Army inventory and will consist of 120mm M830A1 high-explosive anti-tank multi-purpose tank (MPAT) cartridges and related equipment, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The Israeli bombing of Gaza is more indiscriminate in terms of the number of civilian victims in that area in the past years, and the share of civilian victims in the total number in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is significantly higher than in all the wars in the world during the 20th century, according to an analysis that was published today published the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The analysis showed that in the three previous conflicts in Gaza from 2012 to 2022, the share of civilian casualties in the total number was about 40 percent, while it was 33 percent in the bombing in "Operation Shield and Arrow" this year.
During the three weeks of the latest "Iron Swords" operation in Gaza, the share of civilian victims in the purchase number was 61 percent, which Haretz described as "unprecedented killing".
That percentage from Gaza is significantly higher than the balance of civilian casualties in all conflicts in the world during the 20th century in which civilians accounted for about half of the dead.
The conclusion is that the mass killing of civilians not only does not contribute to Israel's security at all, but can further undermine it, said Haretz, who believes that the residents of Gaza who will emerge from the ruins of their homes and after the loss of their families will seek revenge that will not be able to withstand any security arrangements.
This analysis confirmed an investigation ten days ago by two Israeli news sites - "Magazine +972" and "Local Call" - which revealed that Israel deliberately targeted apartment blocks to cause large civilian casualties in the hope that the people would turn against their ruler Hamas.
The British "Guardian" states that these numbers will cause discomfort in the administration of US President Joseph Biden, which is facing general criticism and isolation because it vetoed the UN Security Council's vote last night on the world's request for a cease-fire in Gaza.
During the war sparked by the deadly October 7 Hams attacks on Israel, the US sought to persuade Israeli forces to be more selective in their targeting and, despite the consistently high civilian casualty toll, repeatedly claimed that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) was accepting US advice.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby reiterated this at a press briefing on Friday, but added that "everyone recognizes that more can be done to reduce civilian casualties", announcing that he would work with his Israeli counterparts to do so. achieved.
The US provides Israel with diplomatic support and sends weapons and thus risks being an accomplice in war crimes, warned the international organization "Human Rights Watch, and the Amnesty International organization assessed that the US, with its veto in the UN Security Council, "turned its back on enormous civilian suffering, the number of victims and humanitarian unprecedented catastrophe in Gaza".
About 70 percent of the nearly 17.500 people killed in Gaza since October 7 are women and children, according to the Ministry of Health there, and 46.000 people were wounded in Israeli attacks.
The results of the analysis were released today as Israeli forces scramble to consolidate control over northern Gaza, and bombard the Shejai neighborhood in Gaza City and Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt, where the Israeli military previously told Palestinians to evacuate.
How many people have died in the past 24 hours is not clear, but the main hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip said 71 bodies had been brought in and 62 were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the Palestinian territory's second-largest city, Khan To Yunis in the south.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for reform of the United Nations Security Council on Saturday, decrying the fact that the United States could veto a Gaza ceasefire proposal despite overwhelming support from other countries.
"The request of the United Nations Security Council for a cease-fire is rejected only by the US veto. Is that justice?” Erdogan said at a conference on human rights in Istanbul.
"The UN Security Council needs to be reformed," he added.
A new process for inspecting aid to Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing is being tested, but efforts to get permission for trucks to enter the crossing and to increase aid are still ongoing, a senior UN official told Reuters today.
Under the new system, trucks would first arrive at the Kerem Shalom crossing on the Israel-Gaza-Egypt border from Jordan, before entering Gaza from Rafah, about 3 kilometers (1,86 miles) away, Reuters reports.
But trucks should be allowed to enter Gaza directly through Kerem Shalom to ease the increasingly desperate situation in the coastal enclave, said Karl Skau, deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme.
Israel has so far rejected pleas from the United Nations and others to open Kerem Shalom, but both signaled Thursday that Kerem Shalom could soon help in the process of delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
So far, limited amounts of aid have been delivered from Egypt via the Rafah crossing, which is ill-equipped to handle the large number of trucks.
The trucks drove more than 40 km south to Egypt's border with Israel before returning to Rafah, causing bottlenecks and delays.
The process of testing the Kerem Shalom inspection system for trucks arriving from Jordan is underway, said Skau, who visited Gaza on Friday.
"It's good, it's useful because it would also be the first time we can bring the gas pipeline from Jordan. But we also need that entry point because it would make all the difference," he said in an interview.
"If you open it up, then it's just a question of how much is available and how much can be absorbed on the other side in an orderly way, but then surely that capacity wouldn't be a problem," he added.
“We have replenished our internal resources so that we have food available in Egypt and Jordan to reach some 1.000.000 people in a month. We're ready to go. The trucks are ready to go."
Skau said the situation in Gaza was increasingly chaotic as people grabbed what they could from aid distribution points, with more people displaced south near the border with Egypt and aid trucks at risk of being stopped by desperate residents if they even slowed down. at the intersection.
"The question is how long this can last, because the humanitarian operation is collapsing," he said.
"Half of the population is starving, nine out of 10 don't eat every day. Obviously the needs are huge."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States' veto of a UN Security Council resolution demanding a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza made him complicit in what he said were war crimes against Palestinians, Reuters reports.
Abbas also said he believed the US was responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and the elderly in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the presidency.
Israeli forces and Hamas operatives continued fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, alongside airstrikes, The Times of Israel reported.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say infantrymen encountered a Hamas cell in a school in Gaza City.
The soldiers killed the gunmen and found weapons and military equipment in the classrooms.
Members of the armored units found and destroyed the entrance to the tunnel, which is part of a "wide network" of tunnels.
In Beit Hanun, the IDF says Israeli soldiers came under fire from Hamas operatives who fired from a UN-run mosque and school.
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During the night, Israeli warplanes hit several Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced this morning.
Among the targets hit were several operational centers of the Iran-backed terrorist group, according to The Times of Israel.
During the night, the IDF spotted several missiles fired from Lebanon towards Israel and responded with shelling.
Israeli forces have not reported any casualties.
(BETA)
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