GAZA: Zionist pulled its ground forces out of the southern Gaza Strip Sunday, media reports said, in a partial withdrawal six months into the devastating war. But the military said a "significant force” will keep operating elsewhere in the besieged Palestinian territory. The war entered its seventh month on Sunday, with talks towards a truce and hostage release deal expected to resume in Cairo.
As the bloodiest-ever Gaza war passed the half-year mark, the Zionist entity’s government has faced a growing international backlash against its military campaign, and mass street protests at home. Relations with top ally Washington have deteriorated, and the Middle East is on edge over a potential response from Hamas ally Iran to a deadly strike on Tehran’s consulate building in Syria. The Zionist entity has faced a storm of international outrage over the killing of seven aid workers of the US-based food charity World Central Kitchen in a Gaza air strike on April 1.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Zionist entity was just "one step away from victory” and vowed there would be no let-up in fighting until Hamas releases all captives. He told his cabinet that "there will be no ceasefire without the return of hostages. It just won’t happen.” Air strikes kept pounding Khan Yunis and Rafah during the night, eyewitnesses said.
The army said it withdrew its forces from southern Gaza after months of fighting there left in ruins the city of Khan Yunis, hometown of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. "The 98th commando division has concluded its mission in Khan Yunis,” the army told AFP. "The division left the Gaza Strip in order to recuperate and prepare for future operations.”
An army official told the Haaretz daily that the troops pulled out after they had "dismantled Hamas’ Khan Yunis brigades and killed thousands of its members. "We did everything we could there.” The news of the partial withdrawal came on the day talks towards a truce and hostage release deal were expected to resume in Cairo, including US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
CIA chief Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani will join Egyptian officials for indirect talks from Sunday between the Zionist and Hamas delegations, Egypt’s Al-Qahera News said. Netanyahu had long threatened a ground offensive on far-southern Gaza’s Rafah city, sparking global concern, including from the Zionist entity’s top ally the United States.
Up to 1.5 million Palestinians are crowded into the area on the Egyptian border, many living in tents. Dozens left Rafah by foot, in cars and on donkey carts and returned to Khan Yunis on Sunday after the Zionist pullout, AFP images showed. On Thursday, US President Joe Biden — angered by a Zionist strike that killed seven aid workers of a US-based food charity — told Netanyahu he wants to see a ceasefire and hostage release deal and ramped-up aid deliveries.
Biden — whose government is the Zionist entity’s top arms supplier and political backer — also hinted at making US support for the Zionist entity conditional on curtailing the killing of civilians and improving humanitarian conditions. Several aid trucks on Sunday entered southern Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, the drivers honking their horns as crowds ran after them, AFP TV footage showed. The Zionist entity has faced a storm of international outrage over the killing of the seven aid workers.
A Palestinian father-of-six in northern Gaza, Muhammad Yunis, 51, told AFP the territory’s 2.4 million people desperately need a reprieve from the bombardment and suffering. "It’s been half a year and the bombing and starvation continue,” said the man from Beit Lahia, now a broken landscape of shattered buildings. "Watching the thin bodies of our children takes away our souls ... I feel helpless and humiliated,” he said. "Isn’t the bombing, death and destruction enough? There are bodies still under the rubble. We can smell the stench.”
UNICEF chief Catherine Russell pointed out that more than 13,000 children were reportedly among those killed. "Homes, schools and hospitals in ruin. Teachers, doctors and humanitarians killed. Famine is imminent,” she said on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday. "The level and speed of destruction are shocking. Children need a ceasefire NOW.”
The Zionist entity’s offensive has killed at least 33,175 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the territory. Vast areas of Gaza have been turned into a rubble-strewn wasteland, its people trapped in a dire humanitarian crisis amid a Zionist siege. Gaza has received only sporadic aid via a road crossing with Egypt, airdrops and two sea shipments — and aid agencies warn the deliveries fall far short of the dire needs. Under US pressure, the Zionist entity has pledged to allow for the first time aid deliveries through its Erez border crossing with northern Gaza. – AFP