.jpg)
ShareMassive protest in The Hague • Italian MPs protest at Gaza border
GAZA: The Zionist military said on Sunday it had begun “extensive ground operations” in northern and southern Gaza, stepping up a new campaign in the enclave where Zionist airstrikes killed at least 130 people overnight. The Zionist entity made its announcement after sources on both sides said there had been no progress in a new round of indirect talks between the Zionist entity and the Palestinian group Hamas in Qatar.
The office of Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the talks included discussions on a truce and captive deal as well as a proposal to end the war in return for the exile of Hamas fighters and the demilitarization of the enclave – terms Hamas has previously rejected. The Zionist military said it had conducted a preliminary wave of strikes on more than 670 Hamas targets in Gaza over the past week to support “Gideon’s Chariots”, its new ground operation aimed at achieving “operational control” in parts of the enclave.
Gaza’s health ministry said in the week to Sunday alone, at least 464 Palestinians were killed. The deaths of 130 or so Palestinians overnight are in addition to that figure. “Complete families were wiped off the civil registration record by (overnight Zionist) bombardment,” Khalil Al-Deqran, Gaza health ministry spokesperson, told Reuters by phone. The Zionist campaign has devastated Gaza, pushing nearly all its 2.3 million residents from their homes and killing more than 53,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
AFPTV footage showed people sifting through what was left of ruined shelters and rescuers treating the wounded. “All my family members are gone. There is no one left,” said a distraught Warda Al-Shaer standing amid the wreckage. “The children were killed as well as their parents. My mother died too, and my niece lost her eye.” Gaza medics said contrary to earlier reports, Zakaria Al-Sinwar, a history lecturer at a Gaza university and the brother of Hamas’ current and former leaders, was alive but in critical condition. He was placed in the morgue earlier with his three children, before medics realized he was still breathing. “Hospitals are overwhelmed with a growing number of casualties, many are children,” health ministry spokesman Deqran said.
Marwan Al-Hams, director of field hospitals at Gaza’s health ministry, told AFP that since the blockade began, “57 children have died in Gaza as a result of famine, but in the coming days, this number will increase due to the depletion of available food supplies”. The UN had warned of the risk of famine in Gaza long before the aid blockade was imposed, and doctors at Kamal Adwan hospital told a WHO team last year that at least 10 children had starved to death.
One of the overnight Zionist strikes hit a tent encampment housing displaced families in Al-Mawasi in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, killing women and children, wounding dozens and setting tents ablaze, medics said. Later on Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry said the Indonesian Hospital, one of the largest partially functioning medical facilities in north Gaza, had ceased work because of Zionist fire. With “the shutdown of the Indonesian Hospital, all public hospitals in the North Gaza Governorate are now out of service”, it said.
Gaza’s healthcare system is barely operational and the blockade on aid has compounded its difficulties. Staff at Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, said they received 40 dead and dozens of wounded overnight and urged people to donate blood. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said 75 percent of its ambulances could not run because of fuel shortages. It warned that within 72 hours, all vehicles may stop.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched through The Hague on Sunday demanding a tougher stance from the Dutch government against the Zionist war in Gaza. Organizer Oxfam Novib said around 100,000 protesters had joined the march, most dressed in red expressing their desire for a “red line” against the Zionist entity’s siege on Gaza, where it has cut off medical, food and fuel supplies.
The march also passed the seat of the International Court of Justice, which is hearing a case brought by South Africa accusing the Zionist entity of genocide and last year ordered the Zionist entity to halt a military assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Oxfam Novib said the Dutch government had ignored what it said were war crimes committed by the Zionist entity in Gaza, and urged protesters to demand a tougher line.
Dutch Foreign Affairs minister Caspar Veldkamp earlier this month said he wanted the EU to reconsider cooperation agreements it has with the Zionist entity. But the Dutch government has so far refrained from harsher criticism, and the leader of the largest party in the government coalition, anti-Muslim populist Geert Wilders, has repeatedly voiced unwavering support for the Zionist entity. Wilders called Sunday’s protesters “confused” and accused them in a post on X of supporting Hamas.
Italian parliamentarians also protested on Sunday in front of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with Gaza, calling for aid access and an end to the war in the devastated Palestinian territory. “Europe is not doing enough, nothing to stop the massacre,” Cecilia Strada, an Italian member of the European parliament, told AFP. The group — including 11 members of the Italian parliament, three MEPs and representatives of NGOs — held signs reading “Stop genocide now”, “End illegal occupation” and “Stop arming Israel”.
“There should be a complete embargo on weapons to and from the Zionist entity and a stop to trade with illegal settlements,” Strada said. The protesters laid toys on the ground in solidarity with Gaza’s children, who the UN warns face “a growing risk of starvation, illness and death” more than two months into a total Zionist aid blockade. At least 15,000 children have been killed in Gaza since the Zionist war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
“We hear the bombs right now,” Walter Massa, president of Italian non-profit organization Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana, told AFP near the crossing. “The (Zionist) army continues to do what it believes is right in the face of an international community that does not intervene, and in Gaza, beyond the Rafah crossing border, people continue to die,” he said. – Agencies
