The Israeli army continued its operations in the Gaza Strip on Monday April 15, affirming that the Iranian attack over the weekend will not cause it to deviate from its objectives against Hamas. The Israeli war cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Monday in Tel Aviv, after a first meeting on Sunday which ended without any decision, according to media reports which reported internal divisions.
On Sunday evening, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army, announced the dispatch in the coming days of two additional reserve brigades to fight in the besieged Palestinian territory. According to the army, hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its attack on Israel on October 7 are being held in Rafah, in the far south of the Gaza Strip.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 by the Islamist movement from Gaza, which left 1,170 dead, mostly civilians, according to a report from Agence France-Presse (AFP) established in from official Israeli data. More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain held in Gaza, 34 of whom have died according to Israeli officials.
For its part, the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, announced on Monday a new toll of 33,797 people killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement. October 7. In twenty-four hours, 68 additional deaths were recorded, according to a press release from the ministry, which reported 76,465 wounded in more than six months of war.
Four Israeli soldiers were injured in an explosion that occurred in Lebanese territory, a few hundred meters from the border between Israel and Lebanon, an Israeli military official said Monday.
In a statement, Hezbollah announced that its fighters had placed explosive devices in the Tel Ismail region, on the Lebanese side of the border with Israel. When a patrol from the Israeli Golani Infantry Brigade crossed the border and arrived in the area where the devices had been planted, Hezbollah detonated them, causing deaths and injuries, according to the statement.
The Israeli army on Monday confiscated equipment from the Malachei Shalom outpost, an illegal farm where Benjamin Achimeir, an Israeli teenager murdered on Saturday in the occupied West Bank, lived, whose death provoked reprisals from settlers. This outpost is a farm founded in 2015 in memory of two young Israelis murdered by Palestinians in this area, one in 2003 and the other in June 2015. Evacuated by the army on several occasions, its inhabitants are regularly involved in clashes with their Arab neighbors. In February 2023, the Israeli security cabinet voted to legalize nine outposts including Malachei Shalom but the process is still ongoing.
The United States expressed its concern: “We strongly condemn the killing of 14-year-old Israeli Benjamin Achimeir,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, adding: increasingly concerned about violence committed against Palestinian civilians.” “The violence must stop,” he said.
Humanitarian aid delivered to the Gaza Strip has increased significantly in recent days, White House spokesman John Kirby said Monday in an interview with MSNBC. “It’s significant, but this aid must be maintained. » More than 2,000 trucks were able to enter the enclave, including around a hundred in the last twenty-four hours alone, John Kirby said.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden threatened to condition support for Israel's offensive against Gaza on taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians. The decision was made following an Israeli attack that left seven aid workers at World Central Kitchen dead. John Kirby added in another interview on CNBC that, as President Biden said: “Our policy toward Gaza will evolve if we don't see significant changes over time. »
Emmanuel Macron on Monday justified the difference in treatment applied to the Olympic Games between Russia, excluded as a nation for having decided on “a war of aggression” in Ukraine, and Israel, whose flag will be present, because it was not “ attacker”. Between Russia and Israel, it is “a very different situation”, President Emmanuel Macron responded on BFM-TV / RMC to the LFI deputies and environmentalists who demanded, in vain, at the end of February from the IOC, “to 'apply to Israel, during the next Olympic Games, the same sanctions as to Russia and Belarus'. “Israel was the victim of a terrorist attack (…) We can disagree with Israel on the modalities of providing the response and protecting itself, but we cannot say that Israel is an attacker and therefore the distinction is very clear,” he said. After Iran's direct attack on Israel, France will "do everything to avoid conflagration", added the president.
One hundred and fifty Gazan prisoners released, according to the Gaza authorities. They were captured and detained without charge. They suffered ill-treatment during their detention, according to authorities in the Gaza Strip.
Easyjet is suspending some of its flights. The British airline is suspending flights “to and from Tel Aviv.”
Belgium wants to expel a Palestinian refugee. The Belgian government wants to withdraw his refugee status in Belgium from Palestinian Mohammed Khatib, the European coordinator of a support network for Palestinian prisoners, described as an “extremist hate preacher”.
