GAZA: Zionist tanks thrust deeper on Monday into two north Gaza towns and a historic refugee camp, trapping around 100,000 civilians, the Palestinian emergency service said, as the death toll from the Zionist air and ground onslaught in Gaza reached 43,020, mostly women and children. The Gaza Strip’s health ministry said at least 19 people were killed by Zionist airstrikes and bombardment on Monday, 13 of them in the north of the devastated coastal territory.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said around 100,000 people were marooned in Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies. The emergency service said its operations had come to a halt because of the three-week Zionist assault into the north, an area where the military said it had wiped out Hamas combat forces earlier in the year-long war.

South Africa has filed “evidence” of a “genocide” committed by the Zionist entity in the Gaza Strip with the International Court of Justice, the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday. The document “contains evidence which shows how the government of (the Zionist entity) has violated the genocide convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza”, the presidency said in a statement.

An official for the Hague-based court on Monday confirmed it had received the document, but did declined to give further detail. “The evidence will show that undergirding (the Zionist entity’s) genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide, a failure by (the Zionist entity) to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself and its failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide,” said the presidency.

The “memorial” – the name of the document detailing South Africa’s case against the Zionist entity before the ICJ – cannot be made public but laid out evidence in “over 750 pages of text, supported by exhibits and annexes of over 4,000 pages”, it added. South Africa in December brought a case before the ICJ, arguing the war in Gaza breached the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. Several nations have added their weight to South Africa’s proceedings against the Zionist entity, including Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, Chile and Libya.

Palestinian prisoner rights organizations accused Zionist prison authorities on Monday of “brutally assaulting” Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian detainee in Zionist custody. Prison system staff assaulted Barghouti in his solitary confinement cell at Megiddo Prison in the Zionist entity’s north on Sept 9, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club and a support group for Barghouti said in statements.

The rights groups said they were informed of the event by a lawyer who was able to meet with Barghouti on Sunday. It was his first visit in three months, the Prisoners’ Club told AFP. The assault “resulted in several injuries to Barghouti’s body, to his ribs... as well as bleeding of the right ear and a wound to his right arm, along with severe back pain,” the groups said.

Talks led by the US, Egypt and Qatar to broker a ceasefire in Gaza resumed on Sunday after multiple abortive attempts, with Egypt’s president proposing an initial two-day truce to exchange four Zionist hostages of Hamas for some Palestinian prisoners, to be followed by talks within 10 days on a permanent ceasefire.

Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday the latest meetings in Doha focused on a new outline that takes into account previous proposals and regional developments. He said mediators would resume talks in coming days “in a continued attempt to advance a deal”, without elaborating. To date, the Zionist entity has repeatedly said the war will go on until Hamas is eradicated while the Islamist movement has ruled out end to fighting until Zionist forces leave Gaza.

Gaza’s war has kindled wider conflict in the Middle East, raising concern about global oil supplies, with the Zionist entity carrying out bombings across Lebanon and sending forces into its south in an offensive to disable Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas. It has also triggered rare direct clashes between regional arch-foes the Zionist entity and Iran. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday Tehran would “use all available tools” to respond to the Zionist entity’s weekend attack.

The Zionist entity continued battering Lebanon on Monday, including an early-morning airstrike on a district in the southern port of Tyre that left seven dead, the Lebanese health ministry said. The Zionist military later issued an evacuation order for large swathes of Tyre, including areas that have not been previously asked to evacuate and that included neighborhoods near a seaside hotel where journalists are usually based.

Footage circulated online of civil defense workers driving through Tyre on Monday and urging people to leave. “For your safety, because of the warning, evacuate immediately!” one of them shouted into a megaphone attached to a car. The Zionist entity’s expanding evacuation warnings have made ghost towns out of much of southern Lebanon, including Tyre, and the bombing campaign has left many towns along the border in ruins.

Hezbollah carried out a string of attacks on Zionist troops within Lebanese territory and on military targets within the Zionist entity. It said it had struck a military equipment factory southeast of Acre.

North Gaza’s three major hospitals, whose officials refused the Zionist entity’s orders to evacuate, said they were hardly operating. At least two had been damaged by Zionist fire during the assault and run out of medical, food and fuel stocks. At least one doctor, a nurse and two child patients had died in those hospitals due to a lack of treatment in the past week.

North Gaza residents said Zionist forces were besieging schools and other shelters housing displaced families, ordering them out before rounding up men and pushing women and children to leave the area for Gaza City and points in the south. Only a few families headed toward southern Gaza as the majority preferred to relocate temporarily in Gaza City, fearing they could otherwise never regain access to their homes.

Some said they had written their death notices in case they died from the constant bombardment. “While the world is busy with Lebanon and new nonsense talk about a few days of ceasefire (in Gaza), the (Zionist) occupation is wiping out north Gaza and displacing its people,” a resident of Jabalia told Reuters by a chat app. – Agencies