التصنيف: أخبار

غزة – واس:

قال المتحدث باسم وزارة الصحة الفلسطينية أشرف القدرة: إن ما لا يقل عن 78 فلسطينياً قتلوا في أحدث غارة جوية إسرائيلية، التي أصابت عدة منازل في مخيم المغازي للاجئين بوسط غزة. وأضاف أن كثيرين منهم نساء وأطفال، حسبما أفاد تقرير لوكالة «رويترز» للأنباء. وأسفر القصف عن مقتل 12 شخصاً بالقرب من قرية الزوايدة الصغيرة (وسط)، حسب وزارة الصحة في غزة.

وقالت الوزارة في بيان: إن قصفاً في خان يونس (جنوب) أودى بحياة 18 شخصاً على الأقل. ووجهت إسرائيل نحو خمسين ضربة متتالية لوسط القطاع.

كما أعلنت وزارة الصحة في غزة ارتفاع حصيلة شهداء العدوان الإسرائيلي إلى 20 ألفاً و674 شهيداً، و54 ألفاً و536 جريحاً منذ 7 أكتوبر – تشرين الأول الماضي.

يأتي ذلك فيما كثفت قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي، عمليات القصف الجوي والمدفعي على مخيمات وسط قطاع غزة، مما أسفر عن استشهاد 95 فلسطينيًا وفقدان العشرات، تحت أنقاض المنازل التي استهدفها القصف الإسرائيلي في مخيمات المغازي والبريج والنصيرات وسط القطاع.

Israel remains committed to destroying Hamas, a senior adviser to the country’s prime minister has told Sky News, after Egypt proposed a deal aimed at bringing about a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Egypt has reportedly proposed a future for Gaza which involves Hamas relinquishing power and elections being held – while offering assurances to Hamas that its members would not be chased or prosecuted.

But Mark Regev, senior adviser to Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, told Sky News Hamas “must be destroyed” when asked how the Israeli leadership imagines Gaza after the war.

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Earlier, Mr Netanyahu had told members of his Likud Party in Israel that the ground offensive in Gaza will expand over the coming days, after attacks appeared to intensify on Christmas Day.

The Hamas-led Gaza health ministry says 250 Palestinians have been killed and 500 wounded in the past 24 hours – with 106 of those said to have died in a Christmas Eve airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp.

But despite international efforts to halt the fighting, Israel’s prime minister told members of his party the war “isn’t close to finished”.

“We are not stopping. We are continuing to fight and we are expanding the fight in the coming days,” Mr Netanyahu said. “There will be a long battle.”

Israel “wouldn’t have succeeded” in releasing more than 100 hostages – taken by Hamas from southern Israel on 7 October – without its military pressure, with 129 thought still to be captive in Gaza, Mr Netanyahu argued.

Diplomatic efforts on a new truce to free the remaining hostages have yielded little public progress so far, as Egypt and Qatar mediate talks.

Cool response to reports of Egyptian proposal

Mr Regev told Sky News Israel wants to see a “demilitarised and deradicalised Gaza” and that Mr Netanyahu “believes in a solution where the Palestinians have all the powers to rule themselves and none of the powers to harm Israel”.

His comments about Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas appear to make any breakthrough in ceasefire negotiations unlikely, though.

And according to two Egyptian security sources, Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad have rejected Egypt’s proposal for a permanent ceasefire – which would reportedly involve Hamas giving up power in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, however, said it has “no information” on these reports and that it seeks a “permanent cessation to the aggression and massacres against our people”.

“We reiterate that there can be no negotiations without a comprehensive cessation of aggression,” Izzat Al Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said.

“Our people want to see this aggression completely halted, and do not want to wait for a temporary or partial truce for a short period, after which the aggression and terrorism might fatally continue.”

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have been holding separate talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo, reportedly rejected offering any concessions beyond the possible release of more hostages.

Regev: ‘Hamas war machine would use refugee camp’

Meanwhile, Israel continues to bombard Gaza, with Palestinian residents claiming fighting has only escalated in northern districts – where Israel says it has gained control.

Responding to reports of the Israeli airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp on Christmas Eve, Mr Regev said Israeli authorities are “looking into that” – but told Sky News nobody should be surprised if Hamas used the camp “for its war machine”.

“Unfortunately you have Hamas across civilian neighbourhoods, you have them under hospitals, you’ve had them under schools, even under UN facilities,” he said.

“So you should have no surprises whatsoever in hearing that Hamas would be using Gaza and civilians, including in a refugee camp, for its war machine.”

The Hamas-led Gaza health ministry reports 20,674 people have been killed and 54,536 injured in Israeli strikes since 7 October. Around 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas raiders that day.

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Situation in Gaza ‘desperate’

Israel’s response to 7 October has compounded what a Red Cross aid worker described as an “unprecedented” year of human devastation around the world, citing earthquakes, floods and conflict.

Rory Moylan described a “desperate situation” in Gaza, where colleagues have told of children becoming sick as they face winter without proper clothing, having fled their homes.

As the Israeli military assault continues, the UN has warned that more than half a million people in Gaza are starving due to “woefully insufficient” quantities of food entering the territory.

The vast majority of the 2.3 million Gazans have been driven from their homes, and the UN says conditions are catastrophic.

Jailed Russian politician Alexei Navalny has been tracked down to one of the country’s toughest prisons, after supporters lost touch with him for more than two weeks.

Mr Navalny – seen as a leader for those in Russia who oppose President Vladimir Putin – is in the IK-3 prison in Kharp, about 1,200 miles (1,900km) northeast of Moscow and north of the Arctic Circle, his spokeswoman said.

Known as the Polar Wolf colony, the prison is where those convicted of the most serious crimes are kept, with harsh winters and temperatures expected to soon drop to -28C.

It was founded as part of what was once the gulag system of forced Soviet labour camps, according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

“This prison will be much worse than the one that was before,” spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said, referring to Mr Navalny’s previous prison 145 miles (235km) east of Moscow.

“They are trying to make his life as unbearable as it possibly can be,” she added.

Mr Navalny’s lawyer, Ivan Zhdanov, said supporters of the 47-year-old had sent 618 requests for information on his location and suggested Russian authorities want to isolate him before the election due in March 2024 – which President Putin recently confirmed he would stand in.

As a prisoner, Mr Navalny cannot run for office.

Mr Navalny’s allies, who had already been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony – the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system – said he hadn’t been seen since 6 December.

Russian authorities say he is a convicted criminal, though Mr Navalny denies all the charges against him.

The US welcomed reports Mr Navalny has been located and called for his immediate release.

“We remain deeply concerned for Mr Navalny’s wellbeing and the conditions of his unjust detention,” a US State Department spokesperson added.

“We have conveyed to the Russian government that they are responsible for  what happens to Mr Navalny in their custody.”

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Mr Navalny was praised by Russia’s disparate opposition for returning to the country in 2021 from Germany, where he was treated for what Western tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.

He says he was targeted in Siberia in August 2020 – with novichok, the same substance used in the Salisbury poisonings – but the Kremlin denies trying to kill him and said there is no evidence to support his claims.

His supporters cast him as a future leader of Russia, though it is unclear how much popular support Mr Navalny actually has inside Russia.

The authorities view him and his supporters as extremists, who they say are trying to destabilise Russia, and allege he has links to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in America.

His opposition movement has been outlawed, which has forced many of his followers to flee abroad.

Russia has completed its shipments of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, according to the country’s president, raising international concern.

At a meeting of a Moscow-led economic bloc in St Petersburg, Alexander Lukashenko said the deliveries were finished in October – though he didn’t say how many or where they have been deployed.

Tactical nuclear weapons, which are designed for use on the battlefield, have a short range and a low yield compared with much more powerful nuclear warheads fitted to long-range missiles.

They can have a yield as small as about 1 kiloton, significantly less than the 15 kiloton-yield of the US bomb used on Hiroshima during the Second World War.

Russia said it would maintain control over the weapons it sends to Belarus.

Mr Lukashenko has said hosting Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus is meant to deter NATO-member Poland, which supports Ukraine with military, humanitarian and political backing.

The devices are compact and can be discreetly carried on a truck or plane.

Aliaksandr Alesin, an independent Minsk-based military analyst, said the weapons use containers that don’t emit radiation and could have been moved to Belarus without the West knowing.

“They easily fit in a regular Il-76 transport plane,” he said in July, when further reports of shipments were made.

“There are dozens of flights a day, and it’s very difficult to track down that special flight. The Americans could fail to monitor it.”

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Belarus has 25 underground facilities – built during the Cold War – for nuclear-tipped intermediate-range missiles that can withstand missile attacks, Mr Alesin added.

Only five or six such depots could actually store tactical nuclear weapons, he said, but the military operates at all of them to throw Western intelligence off.