GAZA: The health ministry in Gaza said on Wednesday that 51 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 45,936, mostly civilians. The ministry also said in a statement that at least 109,274 people had been wounded in more than 15 months of war by the Zionist entity. Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said three people including two children were killed Wednesday in a Zionist air strike in the occupied West Bank.
An airstrike killed at least 10 people in a multi-storey house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, while another killed five in the nearby Zeitoun suburb, medics said. In Deir Al-Balah city in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering, and in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, a total of seven people were killed, they said after the Zionist military struck a school. Later on Wednesday, a Zionist airstrike killed five Palestinians inside the public garden in Gaza City, medics said.
Such mass casualties are a daily occurrence in Gaza. As the Zionist entity continued its bombardments, the United States, Qatar and Egypt were making intensive efforts to reach a ceasefire deal, with one source close to the talks saying this was the most serious attempt to reach a deal so far.
The outgoing US administration has called for a final push for a deal before President Joe Biden leaves office, and many in the region view president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan 20 as an unofficial deadline. "Things are better than ever before, but there is no deal yet,” the source told Reuters.
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said overnight he hopes to have good things to report about Zionist captives held by the time Trump is sworn in as president. A deal would also involve the release of Palestinians held in Zionist jails. On Tuesday, Hamas stood by its demand that it will only free its remaining captives if the Zionist entity agrees to end the war and withdraw all its troops from Gaza.
The Gaza Health Ministry meanwhile warned that Nasser Hospital and the Gaza European Hospital might stop operations in a few hours unless the Zionists stop restricting the flow of fuel to the hospitals. It later said it received a limited amount of fuel that would delay a complete halt of operations until Thursday unless more fuel arrives.
Its Gaza campaign has laid waste to much of the enclave. Most of the territory’s 2.1 million people have been displaced multiple times and face acute shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian agencies say. On Wednesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said heavy rains and flooding had left families living in damaged tents with up to 30 cm of water in them, "clinging on to survival without even the most basic necessities, such as blankets”.
Ahmad Asaad, governor of the northern West Bank city of Tubas, told AFP a strike hit nearby Tammun village, killing a 23-year-old man and two children, aged eight and 10, all from the same family. The Palestinian foreign ministry in Ramallah condemned the strike, also saying it killed three people and accusing the Zionist entity in a statement of harming civilians "under the pretext” of fighting militants.
Asaad said Zionist forces, which have operated in Tammun in recent days, took the bodies of the three Palestinians killed on Wednesday "and officially informed us through coordination that they have” them. The governor identified the dead as Adam Bsharat, 23, Hamza Bsharat, 10, and Reda Bsharat, eight. According to Assad, the three were killed in front of their house, which an AFP journalist later said was damaged by shrapnel impact.
Jalal Bsharat, a relative of the victims, said they had been at home when "the (Zionist) occupation army targeted them”. The strike showed that Palestinians are not safe even "in one’s home”, Bsharat told AFP. This was the second Zionist air strike to hit Tammun in as many days, killing two people. – Agencies