Almost 21,000 people killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, says health ministry
20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry said that 241 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 were injured.
Israel has been under pressure from the US to shift operations in Gaza to a lower-intensity phase and reduce civilian deaths.
Key events
The Israeli army has said it arrested senior Palestinian politician Khalida Jarrar in the occupied West Bank, along with other activists of her party, AFP reports.
Jarrar, 60, is a prominent figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a faction in the Palestine Liberation Organisation considered a “terrorist” group by Israel, the US and the EU.
“Khaleda Jarrar, a wanted terrorist, was arrested… along with other PFLP activists,” the army said in a statement.
Jarrar had been previously arrested by Israeli forces in October 2019 and released in September the following year, after being held without trial.
Her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, told AFP soldiers stormed the family home in the city of Ramallah “by breaking open the front door at 5am (0300 GMT”).
Jarrar was elected in 2006 to the Palestinian assembly as a PFLP representative. She has lobbied for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The PFLP, in a statement, said Israel’s army launched a “vast campaign on Tuesday morning to arrest leaders” of the group in the occupied West Bank.
“These arrests will not break the will of our people,” it said.
Summary of the day so far…
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20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry said that 241 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 were injured.
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Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said that Israel is facing a “multi-front war”. “We are in a multi-front war and are coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran,” he told lawmakers. “We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres.”
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People in central Gaza described a night of shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps, which are crowded with people who fled from the north in search of safety, the Associated Press reported.
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The Palestine Red Crescent Society said some displaced people have been injured in artillery shelling that targeted the upper floors of the organisation’s headquarters in Khan Younis. It wrote on X that thousands of internally displaced people are sheltering in the building.
Almost 21,000 people killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, says health ministry
20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry said that 241 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 were injured.
Israel has been under pressure from the US to shift operations in Gaza to a lower-intensity phase and reduce civilian deaths.
The Israeli air force has said dozens of fighter jets on an “attack flight” over the southern Gaza Strip attacked over 100 targets of Hamas, including tunnel shafts and military sites.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said 160 soldiers have been killed in Gaza since ground operations began on 20 October.
A drone was downed near the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Dahab on Tuesday, two security sources, who could not confirm its origin, told Reuters.
Egypt’s Al Qahera News TV had reported earlier that explosions were heard over Dahab.
“A flying object was downed approximately 2km from the shores of Dahab,” Al Qahera said, citing witnesses.
Earlier in December, Egyptian air defences shot down a suspected drone near Dahab, security sources had said.
The Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen have escalated attacks on shipping in the Red Sea in protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Israeli defence minister: ‘We are in a multi-front war’
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has been quoted by Reuters as saying the below in an address to lawmakers.
Gallant said:
We are in a multi-front war and are coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran.
We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres.
The comments come after an Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighbourhood on Monday was reported to have killed a high-ranking Iranian general, Sayyed Razi Mousavi.
The killing of Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guards in Syria, came amid ongoing fears of the Israel-Hamas war sparking a regional spillover.
Iran-backed groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have launched attacks on Israel and its allies in support of Hamas.
Clashes along Lebanon-Israel border between Hezbollah and Israel have continued to intensify, with daily exchanges of missiles, airstrikes and shelling across the frontier.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will hold talks with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia’s foreign ministry said.
The ministers plan to discuss bilateral ties as well as the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, among other issues.
Israeli forces bombard near refugee camps in central Gaza, say residents
People in central Gaza have described a night of shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps, which are crowded with people who fled from the north in search of safety, the Associated Press reports.
“The bombing was very intense,” Radwan Abu Sheitta, a Palestinian teacher said by phone from his home in Bureij. “It seems they are approaching,” he said of the Israeli troops.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military arm, said its fighters hit an Israeli tank east of Bureij. This claim is yet to be independently verified, but it suggests Israeli forces could be moving toward the camp.
Artillery also reportedly struck areas east of the Nuseirat camp.
“We couldn’t sleep because of the bombing,” said Ezzel-Din Mohammed Abdallah al-Masry, a Palestinian fisherman who was displaced to the area from northern Gaza with his five children and other family members. “The children are terrified. We are terrified.”
More than 100 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes late on Sunday in Gaza, including at least 70 in bombings that hit a residential block in the Maghazi refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, health officials in Gaza said. The Israeli military said it was reviewing the Maghazi incident.
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian people on Tuesday in a raid on a refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry has said.
The two people – aged 17 and 31 – were shot dead in the Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron, the ministry said.
A resident from the camp told AFP that troops stormed the camp from its southern and northern entrances.
“The two men were killed just outside their homes,” he said.
The army did not offer an immediate comment to the claims.
The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory has said demolitions were reported this morning in Furush Beit Dajan in the West Bank and yesterday in Deir Ballut.