In the Gaza Strip, 135 people were killed in twenty-four hours, according to a report released on Saturday January 13 by the Hamas health ministry, which has governed the territory since 2007. This report, which totals 23,843 deaths since start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7 could not be independently verified.
Hamas also reports 60,317 injured, while thousands remain under the rubble. The majority of those killed were women, adolescents and children, according to the same source.
According to Hamas, dozens of people were killed in the south of the enclave, bombarded by the Israeli army, on the ninety-ninth day of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Intense bombings were reported in the South, in Khan Younes, a town which has become the epicenter of the fighting, and in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, from where hundreds of thousands of Gazans fled the clashes towards the north. . Hamas announced that the bombings in Rafah left around thirty dead, including several children, during the night from Friday to Saturday.
For its part, the Israeli army announced that it had destroyed dozens of rocket launch sites and killed four “terrorists” in Khan Younes by air strikes. It also claims to have “eliminated armed terrorists” in a “Hamas command post” in the center of the Gaza Strip.
“No one will stop us, neither The Hague, nor the axis of evil, nor anyone else,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference in Tel Aviv, referring in particular to South Africa's application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of a genocidal act in the Gaza Strip.
“The large-scale death, destruction” and “pain of the last hundred days”, since the start of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, are “a stain on our common humanity”, declared the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
The American army carried out a new bombardment of Houthi rebel sites in Yemen on Saturday after the latter increased their threats against international maritime traffic in the Red Sea.
Early in the morning, the Al-Masirah channel, controlled by the rebels, reported strikes on at least one site in the capital, Sanaa. “The US-British enemy is targeting the capital, Sanaa, with a number of raids,” the channel announced, quoting its correspondent. The US Central Military Command (Centcom) confirmed a US strike around 3:45 a.m. Saturday (1:45 a.m. BST) “against a radar site in Yemen.”
Late Saturday afternoon, a new bombardment hit the city of Hodeida, in western Yemen, in response to a rocket attack carried out by Houthi rebels from this port city, according to military sources. “The site from which a Houthi rocket was launched, on the outskirts of Hodeidah, was hit,” said a military source allied to the rebels, who added that it had not been possible to establish the maritime origin or air attack. A police source confirmed the strike.
Since Friday, the conflict has spread to Yemen, with two episodes of American and British attacks against Houthi rebels who attack maritime transport in the Red Sea in “solidarity” with Gaza. China denounced the US-British operations on Saturday, saying through its representative to the United Nations that “this does not contribute to the protection of the safety and security of commercial vessels or the freedom of navigation”.
On Friday, communications, including the Internet, were completely cut off, according to the Palestinian operator Paltel. Communications were partially restored on Saturday afternoon, according to a journalist from Agence France-Presse.
The lack of fuel also led to the shutdown of the main generator at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, according to a source in the Hamas health ministry. Israel opposes the entry of fuel as humanitarian aid, citing the risk of diversion by Hamas.
At the same time, negotiations continue on the fate of the hostages, whose relatives held a new gathering in Tel Aviv around a simulation of the tunnels riddled with Gaza and used by Hamas for its operations.
Those detained will receive medication “in the coming days” under an agreement negotiated through Qatar, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced Friday. A source close to Hamas confirmed the holding of these talks, without however specifying the content of their conclusions.
In the West Bank, the Israeli army said it killed three people on Friday after attacking the Jewish colony of Adora, about twenty kilometers from Hebron. According to the Palestinian agency WAFA, they are a 19-year-old and two teenagers. In a separate incident in the northern West Bank, a 19-year-old Palestinian died after the Israeli army shelled the Tulkarem area, according to Palestinian news agency WAFA.
In London, thousands of people marched on Saturday in the seventh demonstration in support of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, demanding an “immediate” ceasefire and lambasting the British government’s support for Israel. In the procession, made up of demonstrators of all ages, many of whom came with families, signs called to “stop bombing children” in Gaza, mixed with olive branches, rainbow flags with the word “ Peace” and hundreds of Palestinian flags.
In Paris, several hundred demonstrators gathered on the Place de la République to call for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the war, the lifting of the blockade of Gaza and the imposition of sanctions on the against Israel.
