Israel says war to wind down in Gaza

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israel has said its operations against Hamas in southern Gaza will soon enter a less intensive phase, after the militant group’s health ministry reported the death toll in the territory had surpassed 24,000.

More than 100 days into the war, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under intense international pressure to end the fighting as civilian deaths soar and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens.

At the same time, deadly violence in the occupied West Bank, exchanges of fire over Israel’s border with Lebanon, and strikes by US forces on Iranbacked Yemeni rebels acting in solidarity with Hamas have all raised fears of an escalation beyond the Gaza Strip.

UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday reiterated calls for a stop in the combat, saying: “We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to ensure sufficient aid gets to where it is needed, to facilitate the release of the hostages, to tamp down the flames of wider war — because the longer the conflict in Gaza continues, the greater the risk of escalation and miscalculation.”

Fighting has ravaged Gaza since Oct 7, when Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel that resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also dragged about 250 hostages back to Gaza that day, 132 of whom Israel says are still there, including at least 25 believed to have been killed.

As of Monday evening, at least 24,100 Palestinians, around 70 per cent of them women, young children and adolescents, had been killed in the Gaza Strip in Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry — a figure that would represent roughly one per cent of the territory’s population.

Hamas’s press office said Tuesday morning that Israeli strikes had killed another 78 people overnight.