Photo: REUTERS/Abed Sabah
Dozens of people are killed in an Israeli army attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. This was reported on 23 December by the Al-Jazeera television station.
The channel's correspondent described the artillery and rocket attacks as a "carpet bombing" of the residential sector. The bodies of the dead continue to remain in destroyed houses, with rescuers and doctors unable to reach them.
The day before, the UN warned of growing hunger in Gaza with each day of fighting. The world body's document noted that the Palestinian enclave has the highest level of food crisis, with 79 % Gazans in emergency. It highlighted that the risk of famine in the enclave increases with each passing day of fighting and with limited access to humanitarian aid.
Earlier, on December 21, the White House said Israeli authorities are aware of the need to reduce the intensity of fighting in the Gaza Strip, but it is unclear when exactly that will happen.
Also on 21 December, Abu Ubeida, an official of Hamas' military wing (Al-Qassam Brigades), said that if Israel wants to return its prisoners alive, it must stop fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier, on 19 December, it was reported that more than 19,600 Palestinians had been killed and 52,500 others injured as a result of Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said on 18 December that the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip had become "the worst in the world" because people could not even flee the enclave. He stressed that even more people could die from disease and hunger than from fighting.
The situation in the Middle East escalated on the morning of 7 October when the radical Palestinian movement Hamas subjected Israel to massive rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and also invaded border areas in the south of the country and took hostages. On the same day, Israel began retaliating against targets in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians are trying to return the border between the two countries to the lines that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. Palestine wants to create its own state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and make East Jerusalem its capital. Israel rejects these conditions.
Izvestia/JaV
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