The military wing of the Palestinian movement Hamas announced this evening that "many of the hostages were probably killed recently" and added that Israel bears full responsibility for the fate of the hostages.
"The fate of many hostages has been unknown in recent weeks," Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, said in a televised address, without specifying details or the source of such information.
According to him, many of them "probably were killed recently, and the rest are in great danger."
"Full responsibility lies with the leadership of the enemy (Israel) and its army," he added.
About 250 people were kidnapped during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and taken to Gaza, of whom about 100 were later released.
(BETA)
The leader of the pro-Iranian Lebanese movement Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said today that Israel has "failed" to achieve its goals in Gaza, which will force the country to negotiate.
"What has the enemy achieved in 100 days, except killing?" Nasrallah said in a televised speech on the death of Hezbollah's top military representative Wissam Tawil, who was killed by Israel in an attack recently in the southern part of Lebanon.
Nasrallah assessed that Israel had not achieved "any real or apparent victory". "He failed to achieve his stated, half-stated and implied goals," he added.
The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip was triggered on October 7 by an attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Israel, which killed around 1.140 people, mostly civilians, according to AFP.
In retaliation, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, and is relentlessly shelling the area, which has killed at least 23.968 people, mostly women, teenagers and children, according to the latest estimate by Hamas' Health Ministry.
Since October 8, there has been a daily exchange of cross-border fire between the Lebanese movement, which it says is intervening in support of Hamas against the Israeli army.
On the other hand, Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels are stepping up attacks on ships in the Red Sea, believed to be linked to Israel. They said they were doing it in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Tehran-backed Iraqi fighters also claim to have carried out attacks on bases housing US troops in Syria and Iraq.
"If we continue on this path, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq, the enemy (Israeli) government will have no choice but to accept the conditions of the resistance in Gaza and therefore put an end to the aggression on Gaza and start negotiations," Nasrallah said.
(BETA)
The Israeli army says it has entered a new phase of the war and is now focused on the southern part of the Gaza Strip, where nearly two million people are temporarily housed, after an initial phase focused on clearing the northern part of the enclave, including Gaza City.
Israeli tanks and planes hit targets in the southern and central part of Gaza today, and in some areas there were fierce armed battles, writes Reuters.
Communication and Internet services have been down for the third day, making it difficult for the Emergency Services, which are trying to help people in areas affected by the fighting.
The fighting was concentrated in the southern city of Khan Younis, where Hamas said its fighters hit an Israeli tank, as well as Burei and Magazi in central Gaza, where the Israeli military said several militants were killed.
The army also said that its forces destroyed several launchers, which Hamas uses to fire missiles at Israel.
About 300 people protested today in the south of Cyprus against the participation of British military bases on the island in the conflicts in Gaza and Yemen.
South Africa says more than 50 countries have expressed their support for its case at the United Nations' top court accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war.
Other countries, including the US, have rejected South Africa's accusation that Israel is violating the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and many have said nothing.
The world's reaction to Thursday and Friday's hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague shows the expected division over the 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Today is one hundred days since the beginning of their greatest war.
Most of the countries that support South Africa are from the Arab world and Africa. In Europe, only Turkey has publicly expressed its support.
No Western country supported South Africa's accusations against Israel.
The US, a close ally of Israel, rejected them as unfounded, Great Britain as unfair, and Germany rejects them outright.
China and Russia said little about one of the most significant cases before the international court, and the European Union also did not comment.
Israel rejects accusations of genocide and says it is defending its people.
In addition, he states that the offensive aims to destroy the leader of Hamas, the extremist organization that rules Gaza, and that Hamas provoked the conflict with a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, in which about 1.200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and about 250 hostages were taken.
In Israel's response to the attacks in Gaza, more than 23.000 Palestinians were killed, according to the Ministry of Defense, which says that more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children. Much of northern Gaza has been rendered uninhabitable and entire neighborhoods have been razed to the ground by airstrikes and tank fire.
South Africa also condemned the October 7 attacks by Hamas, but did not condone Israel's response.
The 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is one of the first blocs of countries to publicly support the case brought to the court in December last year.
She said Israeli forces were committing mass genocide and accused Israel of indiscriminately targeting Gaza's civilian population.
The 22-member Arab League, almost all of which are in the OIC, also supported South Africa's case.
Outside the Arab world, Namibia and Pakistan agreed with the country, as did Malaysia.
India, like Russia and China, has remained silent, aware, it seems, that taking a stand in such an incendiary case could damage its relations in the region.
However, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of the first world leaders to express solidarity with Israel and label the Hamas attack as terrorism.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva supported South Africa's case, but did not directly accuse Israel of genocide, instead calling for a ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that no one, not even the world court, can stop Israel's war against Hamas.
(BETA)
One person was killed and another injured in an anti-tank rocket attack in the north of Israel, near the border with Lebanon, the Israeli emergency service announced.
The Israeli military said a missile hit a house, causing casualties, as if IDF forces were targeting Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, Reuters writes.
Pope Francis has declared that war is a "crime against humanity", again calling for an end to war in both Ukraine and the Middle East.
"Let's not forget this (...) People need peace, the world needs peace," the pope said.
In his prayer, he called on people not to forget those who suffered because of the "cruelty of war" in many parts of the world, reports Reuters.
"Let us pray that those who have power over these conflicts will reflect on the fact that war is not the way to solve them, because it sows death among civilians and destroys cities and infrastructure," the pope said.
The Egyptian and Chinese foreign ministers together today in Cairo requested a ceasefire on the 100th day of the war in the Gaza Strip and the creation of the State of Palestine as a full member of the UN.
At a joint press conference at the start of a tour of Africa, Chinese Minister Wang Yi said that he and his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shukri, are for an independent and sovereign state of Palestine within the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In a joint statement, the two ministers also called for "an end to violence and fighting".
The statement also called for "an international peace summit to find a just, complete and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue and an end to the occupation (of Israel) and an independent state of Palestine," which would be territorially connected while Palestinians now live under two rival, parallel government.
The administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah, controls parts of the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, and Hamas, which has been at war with Israel since it attacked southern Israel on October 7, governs Gaza.
China has good relations with Israel, but has supported the Palestinian cause for several decades and considers Palestine a state. Beijing advocates a solution to the conflict based on the two-state model.
(BETA)
The Hamas Health Ministry announced today that 23.968 people have died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Most of the dead are women and minors.
According to this balance announced on the 100th day of the war, 7 people were wounded in that Palestinian territory as of October 60.582.
(BETA)
Last night, the Israeli army arrested two sisters of another Hamas man, Saleh al-Aruri, who was killed on January 2 in Lebanon in an attack attributed to Israel, an association that supports Palestinian prisoners announced today.
Two women were arrested in the village of Arura near Ramallah for "inciting terrorism against the State of Israel", a military statement confirmed.
Dalal al-Aruri (52) and Fatma al-Aruri (47) were arrested in their home, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club announced.
Saleh al-Aruri, number two in Hamas and one of the founders of the military wing of that Palestinian Islamic organization, was killed in an airstrike on the outskirts of Beirut.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, since October 7, the Israeli army has arrested nearly 5.900 people (including 1.970 of them who have been placed in administrative detention) in the occupied West Bank, where tensions have been greatly increased by attacks by Palestinian extremists from Gaza, led by Hamas, into southern Israel. .
The Aruri sisters were arrested hours before an expected speech by the leader of Hamas's ally, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah.
In his first speech the day after the attack on the suburbs of Beirut, he announced that the killing of Saleh al-Aruri would not go unpunished and that a response was imminent.
Since then, daily clashes on the border between Lebanon and Israel have intensified, starting on October 8, the day after the Hamas attack on southern Israeli territory.
Aruri's death fueled fears of a wider conflict, and on January 8, a Hezbollah military leader was killed in an Israeli attack in Lebanon.
In retaliation, Hezbollah targeted a military base in Israel the next day.
(BETA)
Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said today that his country is in full control of its borders after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call to close Egypt's border with Gaza before the end of the war.
Netanyahu said last night that Israel cannot end the war against Hamas until the closure of the Philadelphia Corridor, a 14-kilometer-long strip of land that serves as the border between Egypt and Gaza.
In a statement to an Egyptian TV channel, Abu Zeid said that in response to Netanyahu's announcement that Israel "will not end the war unless that loophole is closed", Cairo will continue to control the border with Gaza.
The Israeli leader said that even if Hamas is defeated, "military equipment and other deadly weapons will continue to enter through the southern opening," which must therefore be closed.
Referring to the entry of trucks with humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, Abu Zeid said that "every decision that delays entry is an Israeli measure, including excessive meticulousness in the inspection of trucks, wasting time during the inspection process, banning the entry of medical equipment and preventing the entry of journalists and officials." .
Meanwhile, heavy rains in the south of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt flooded dozens of shelters, Palestinian media reported.
As stated, several shelters and schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in southern Gaza, where thousands of civilians have taken refuge from the war, were damaged.
Displaced people in Khan Yunis and Rafah were also left without shelter, as strong winds destroyed their tents.
(BETA)
Israeli forces have killed at least nine Palestinian extremists during operations in the Gaza Strip, the military said this morning, in the 100th day of the war against Hamas.
As stated, the fighting took place in Khan Yunis and in areas further north in the Strip, where, as Israel claims, heavy losses were inflicted on Hamas.
The army also clashed with extremists who tried to enter northern Israel from Lebanon and killed four of them, it was announced today.
The conflict broke out during a patrol in the disputed area of Sheba Farm when Israeli soldiers noticed four people who opened fire on them.
In the exchange of fire, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) carried out artillery and mortar strikes.
In Tel Aviv last night, relatives and friends of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza began a 24-hour protest, demanding that the authorities bring them to their homes.
Israeli officials say 1.139 people have been killed in attacks led by Hamas since October 7 last year, including 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, France Press reported.
The extremists took about 240 hostages during the attack, and 136 are still in Gaza, said Tal Becker, an adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
In Gaza, at least 23.843 people were killed and 60.317 were wounded, according to the data of the local ministry.
Conflicts intensified in another Palestinian territory, the occupied West Bank. Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, the exchange of fire between the Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, and the Israeli army on the Lebanese-Israeli border has been almost daily.
(BETA)
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