Attacks by land, sea and air: Israel plunges Gaza Strip into catastrophe

This Sunday, the Israeli army revealed new attacks and operations in the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air against alleged targets of the Hamas group, after 205 days of military offensive that created “atrocious” living conditions for the population.

Israeli army fighter jets attacked and “precisely dismantled the launch sites ready to fire on Israeli territory”, said an army statement, adding that the armed forces continue to operate in central Gaza.

“In the last few hours, fighter jets and other aircraft have attacked dozens of terrorist targets, including terrorist infrastructures, launch sites, armed terrorists and observation posts”, says the military statement, stressing that the Israeli navy joined these attacks with “support from fire” and assistance to ground forces.

Since the start of the war on October 7, more than 34,300 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of them children and women, in Israel’s relentless offensive, in which 260 Israeli soldiers have died.

Without revealing further details or locations, the army says the planes killed “several” suspected fighters near the troops and that the planes and artillery killed another group of fighters operating in the center of the Gaza Strip.

For the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), these continuous “Israeli bombings from the air, land and sea in vast areas of the Gaza Strip” are resulting in “more civilian casualties, displacement and destruction of homes and other civil infrastructure.”

The spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, this week described living conditions in Gaza as “terrible” and warned that they will worsen with rising temperatures and increasing difficulty in accessing drinking water. , as Israeli attacks caused the collapse of the drinking water treatment system.

These attacks occur at a time when Hamas is analyzing the latest proposal for a truce in Gaza presented by Israel, which continues to insist, despite pressure from the international community, on its determination to invade Rafah, in the extreme south of the Palestinian enclave, where they are gathering around 200,000 inhabitants and 1.2 million displaced people.

The United Nations humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, warned the UN Security Council on April 24 that a possible ground incursion into Rafah “would worsen the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, with consequences for people already displaced and who endure severe difficulties and suffering”.