GAZA: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday urged Hamas to free all captives, saying their captivity provided the Zionist entity with “excuses” to attack Gaza, as rescuers recovered charred bodies from a Zionist strike. Zionist attacks killed at least 25 people across the besieged territory, while Germany, France and Britain urged the Zionist entity to end its blockade on aid.

“Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages,” Abbas said in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Zionist-occupied West Bank. “I’m the one paying the price, our people are paying the price, not (the Zionist entity). My brother, just hand them over. Every day there are deaths,” Abbas said. “You sons of ****, hand over what you have and get us out of this” ordeal, he added, levelling a harsh Arabic epithet at Hamas.

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim called Abbas’ remarks “insulting”. “Abbas repeatedly and suspiciously lays the blame for the crimes of the occupation and its ongoing aggression on our people,” he said.

Ties between Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas have been tense, with deep political and ideological divisions for nearly two decades. Abbas and the PA have often accused Hamas of undermining Palestinian unity, while Hamas has criticized the former for collaborating with the Zionist entity and cracking down on dissent in the West Bank.

Hamas’ armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades later Wednesday issued footage it said was of a Zionist captive alive in a Gaza tunnel. He identified himself as 48-year-old Omri Miran. His family in a statement decried “a moral failure for (the Zionist entity) ... We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us.”

The Zionist entity continued to pound Gaza, with rescuers saying at least 25 people had been killed since dawn, including 11 in a strike on a school-turned-shelter. “The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, describing the attack on Yaffa school in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood.

An AFP journalist reported seeing several bodies in white shrouds at Al-Shifa hospital’s morgue, where women wept over the body of a child. “We want nothing more than for the war to end, so we can live like people in the rest of the world,” said Khan Yunis resident Walid Al-Najjar. “We are a people who are poor, devastated — our lives are lost.”

Since the war began, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans have sought refuge in schools. Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once. “We lack the necessary tools and equipment to carry out effective rescue operations or recover the bodies of martyrs,” Bassal said. On Tuesday, the Zionist military said it had targeted approximately 40 “engineering vehicles”, alleging they were used for “terror purposes”.

Elsewhere in Gaza, further fatalities were reported Wednesday, including four in Zionist shelling of homes in eastern Gaza City, Bassal said. Since the Zionist entity’s campaign resumed, at least 1,928 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total death toll since the war erupted to at least 51,305, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

Germany, France, and Britain on Wednesday called on the Zionist entity to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”. “We urge (the Zionist entity) to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians,” their foreign ministers said in a joint statement. – AFP