Hamas offers release of 70 captives in Gaza for a five-day truce
More than 30 people were killed in an Israeli bombardment of Jabalia camp
Israeli army says 44 soldiers killed in Gaza since start of war
The United States carried out two air strikes in Syria against Iran and its aligned groups
GAZA ( Web News )
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Monday it told Qatari mediators the group was ready to release up to 70 women and children held in Gaza in return for a five-day truce with Israel.
“Last week there was an effort from the Qatari brothers to release the enemy captives from women and children, in return for the release of 200 Palestinian children and 75 women detained by the enemy” Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, said in an audio recording posted on the group’s Telegram channel.
“The truce should include a complete ceasefire and allow aid and humanitarian relief everywhere in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
He accused Israel of “procrastinating and evading” the price of the deal.
More than 30 people were killed in an Israeli bombardment of Jabalia camp
More than 30 people were killed while scores were injured in an Israeli bombardment of Jabalia camp, in northern Gaza, Palestinian media reported on Monday.
This is the fourth attack on Gaza’s biggest refugee camp.
On November 8, an Israeli airstrike on a house near a hospital in the refugee camp took the lives of at least 19 people, the Palestinian interior ministry said.
Israeli airstrikes devastated parts of Jabalia on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, flattening multi-story dwellings in a densely populated area of Hamas-ruled Gaza’s urban heartland, and Palestinian authorities said at least 195 civilians were killed.
Israel said its previous air attacks on Jabalia have killed two Hamas commanders and a number of militants while targeting operational tunnels dug beneath civilian districts.
The air strikes on Jabalia, within Gaza City encircled by Israeli armored forces, have heightened international alarm at the soaring humanitarian toll of Israel’s onslaught into the densely populated coastal enclave.
Israel has blamed Hamas for civilian deaths in Gaza, saying that it is using Gazans as human shields and hiding arms and operations centers in residential areas.
Gaza’s government said the death toll from the ongoing war reached 11,240 on Monday, after more than five weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants.
Among the dead were 4,630 children and 3,130 women, the government said, with another 29,000 people wounded.
The Israeli army on Monday announced the death of two additional soldiers in northern Gaza, raising to 44 the number killed in the Palestinian territory since October 7.
An army spokesperson told AFP that 44 were killed “inside Gaza during the war” that began when Hamas militants stormed Israel’s southern border.
Israel on Friday revised down the death toll from last month’s Hamas attacks in southern Israel from 1,400 to 1,200, according to a foreign ministry spokesman.
“This is the updated number. It is due to the fact that there were lot of corpses that were not identified and now we think those belong to terrorists … not Israeli casualties,” ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told AFP.
Israel is facing mounting international pressure, including from its main ally the United States, to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza as the death toll rose and fighting intensified between Israeli forces and Hamas militants near and around hospitals.
Global calls for Israeli restraint increased as the number of Palestinians killed rose above 11,000 in a five-week-old Israeli bombardment launched against Hamas in retaliation for its deadly October 7 rampage in southern Israel.
The United States carried out two air strikes in Syria against Iran and its aligned groups
The United States carried out two air strikes in Syria against Iran and its aligned groups on Sunday, the Pentagon said, in the latest response to a series of attacks against American forces in Syria and in Iraq.
In a statement, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes targeted a training facility near the city of Albu Kamal and a safe house near the city of Mayadeen. He said President Joe Biden ordered the strikes.
“The President has no higher priority than the safety of US personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” Austin said in a statement.
Local sources also said the strikes targeted a camp run by pro-Iranian militias in an area west of Albu Kamal, in Deir al Zor province. The other strike was near a bridge close to the city of Mayadeen, near the Iraqi border and stronghold of pro-Iranian militias, the sources said.
