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22-12-2023
GAZA CITY: The Hamas-run Gaza government says 20,000 people have been killed there since Israel launched its military campaign against the militants.
Israel took action after Hamas broke through the heavily guarded Gaza perimeter on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, some of whom have been freed.
In Cairo, talks between Hamas and Egyptian negotiators ended for the day without results after Hamas insisted there could be no new prisoner exchange deal before a final ceasefire.
The UN Security Council further postponed a meeting to discuss calls for “urgent humanitarian pauses” in Gaza.
A draft resolution by the United Arab Emirates also called for the return of hostages and a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said anyone who thought Israel would stop the war before achieving its goals was “not connected to reality.”
The Israeli military says it has found the tunnel network once used by Hamas’s senior leadership in Gaza City, which it describes as an “underground terrorist city”.
In an update, the Israel Defense Forces says its troops have secured control over what it calls the “elite quarter” of Gaza’s largest city – around Palestine Square in the al-Rimal area.
The IDF says after weeks of fighting its forces took control of the area in Gaza’s largest city, which it says is where Hamas’s “administrative and military leadership operated” – including political leaders like Ismail Haniyeh, and military commanders Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif.
It adds that Palestine Square is the centre of a “strategic tunnel network”, which connects to the “underground infrastructure in the area of the Rantisi Hospital and the Shifa Hospital”.
The IDF shared video footage of soldiers exploring a series of tunnels and satellite images with alleged entrances marked, but no evidence of them being connected to either hospital was provided.
It also says the tunnel shafts that form part of the “underground terrorist city” were built in the “residences and offices of senior officials”, which were used to direct Hamas’s “operational activity” and for “protected daily movement through the heart of Gaza City”.
Israel’s prisons are running out of space amid a surge of arrests following Hamas’s 7 October attacks and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza.
A senior Israel Prison Service (IPS) official revealed on Monday that Israel had imprisoned more than 3,000 people since 7 October, according to a press release by the Knesset.
“We are very close to exhausting the space for inmates in prisons,” said Elyasaf Zakai, head of the IPS’ Incarceration Branch.
There are 19,372 inmates in Israeli prisons currently, compared with 16,353 before 7 October, he said. (Int’l News Desk)
