the Israeli army surrounds Khan Younès where violent fighting is taking place – L’Express

The Israeli army surrounds this Wednesday the large town of Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, where some of the most intense fighting in two months of war against Hamas is raging. Engaged since October 27 in a ground offensive against Hamas in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has extended its ground operations to the entire territory.

⇒ The Israeli army in Khan Younes.

⇒ The United States increases humanitarian aid to Gaza.

⇒ Biden “unambiguously” condemns Hamas’ sex crimes.

“Our forces are surrounding Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip,” Israeli army chief of staff Herzi Halevi said in a statement. “We have secured many Hamas strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip, and we are now carrying out operations against its strongholds in the south,” he continued. “Our forces find weapons in almost every building and house, terrorists in many houses and confront them,” he added.

Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad told AFP that their fighters are waging violent clashes with Israeli troops in an effort to prevent them from entering Khan Yunis and areas east of the city, as well as than in nearby refugee camps.

According to the Hamas government press office, artillery fire caused “dozens of deaths and injuries” during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in several villages east of Khan Younes. The Israeli army also attacked several other areas of the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli strike on a school housing Palestinians displaced by the war left at least 25 dead Tuesday in Khan Younes, the Hamas health ministry said. Dozens of injured people, as well as bodies recovered from the rubble of the Ma’an school, a district of Khan Younès, were taken to the Nasser hospital in this town in the south of the small coastal territory, targeted for several days by intense bombing by the Israeli army. An assessment that no independent source is able to verify.

According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, overwhelmed by the influx of wounded and short of staff and supplies, is home to more than 1,000 patients and 17,000 displaced people.

The United States will provide an additional $21 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza, the head of the American development agency announced Tuesday during a visit to Egypt, neighboring the Palestinian territory.

“The United States, through USAID, will provide more than $21 million in additional humanitarian assistance to residents of Gaza and the West Bank affected by the ongoing conflict, which has left approximately 2.2 million people in need,” announced Samantha Power, Administrator of the United States Agency for Development and Humanitarian Assistance (USAID). This sum is in addition to the $100 million in humanitarian aid already announced by President Joe Biden in October, she said, according to a USAID press release.

Joe Biden called on Tuesday to “unambiguously and forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists”, during a meeting intended to raise funds for his campaign in Boston. “Hamas terrorists made women and young girls suffer as much as possible” during the October 7 attack, said the American president, referring to the “horrible testimonies of the unimaginable cruelty” suffered that day .

“Putting an end to violence against women and sexual assault is one of the battles of my life,” he continued. “We must all – governments, international organizations, civil society and the economic world – unambiguously and forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists,” he demanded.

Two people, including a Lebanese soldier, were killed Tuesday in Israeli bombardments in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army and the official news agency said. In a statement, the army, deployed in the border area, indicated that “the Israeli enemy bombed” one of its military posts in the Aadaissé region, “killing one soldier and injuring three others”.

The Israeli army acknowledged the incident and claimed to have targeted a position of the Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian movement Hamas, “to eliminate an imminent threat”. “The Lebanese armed forces were not the target of the strike,” the Israeli army said on X (formerly Twitter) expressing its “regret for the incident”. This is the first Lebanese soldier killed since the start on October 8 of almost daily exchanges of fire on the border between Israel and Hezbollah.