Israel pounds Gaza after offer to release hostages
• Hamas calls for end of Gaza offensive as it mulls whether three Israelis will be killed or spared
Israeli forces bombarded targets across Gaza on Monday before an expected Hamas announcement on the fate of three Israelis held hostage by the militants shown in a video clip at the weekend.
Twelve Palestinians were killed and others wounded in an Israeli air strike overnight on a house in Gaza City in the north, Hamas health officials said, while plumes of smoke rose above the southern city of Khan Younis shelled by Israeli tanks.
Hamas aired a video on Sunday showing three Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza and urged Israel to halt its aerial and ground offensive and bring about their release.
The undated 37-second video of Noa Argamani, 26, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, ended with the caption: “Tomorrow [Monday] we will inform you of their fate.”
On Monday, maintaining the psychological pressure, Hamas released a video clip featuring the faces of the three hostages and the question, “What do you think?”
The clip then offers three options, in which all three are killed, “some are killed, some are injured”, or all three are spared. The video ends with the message: “Tonight we will inform you of their fate.”
Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Press Agency SAFA reported fierce clashes between Hamas militants and Israeli forces in Khan Younis, while Israeli tank barrages were also reported near the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza.
In Al-Nusseirat refugee camp, local journalist Doaa ElBaz showed footage of what was once the street where she lived.
“This whole neighbourhood is destroyed. Not a single house has been spared,” she said, standing before mounds of rubble. “They killed all our dreams here.”
In a statement, the Israeli military said it had killed two Palestinian fighters in an air strike on their vehicle as it was transporting weapons in Khan Younis, and also raided a Hamas command centre in that city and struck two arms caches.
Separately, a Palestinian stole a car and rammed people in the central Israeli town of Raanana on Monday, injuring at least 13, police said. The suspect — believed to be from Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — is now in custody, they said.
Israeli media said some people might have also been stabbed in the incident.
Communications across the narrow coastal Gaza Strip remained severed for a fourth day running, said residents.
The three Israeli hostages held in Gaza are among about 240 seized by Islamist Hamas militants during a surprise cross-border rampage into southern Israel on October 7.
That Hamas assault, in which Israel says more than 1,200 people were killed, prompted an aerial and ground blitz by Israeli forces that over 100 days since has turned much of Gaza into a wasteland and killed, health officials say, about 24,100 people and wounded nearly 61,000.
Hamas health officials said 132 were killed in the past 24 hours, suggesting to Palestinians that there has been little let-up in the intensity of Israel’s offensive despite its announcement of a shift to a more targeted phase.
Israel’s military has said it will devote months of more targeted operations against leaders and positions of Hamas in the south after an initial all-out offensive aimed at clearing the built-up northern end of Gaza.
About half of the 240 hostages taken by Hamas in its October 7 incursion into southern Israel were released during a short-lived November truce, but Israel says 132 remain in Gaza and 25 died in captivity.
Almost 2-million displaced people are sheltering in tents and other temporary accommodation in southern Gaza amid the fighting, and are facing increased risks of starvation and disease due to chronic shortages of food, fuel and medicines.
UN agencies renewed their appeal on Monday for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
“We need unimpeded, safe access to deliver aid and a humanitarian ceasefire to prevent further death and suffering,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Hunger will further harm the ill and make “an already terrible situation catastrophic”, said Ghebreyesus.
A video clip circulating on social media showed crowds of people running beside UN vehicles on a beach in Gaza City hoping to get some aid. People were shown carrying away bags of flour. Reuters was able to verify the location shown in the clip but not the date it was filmed.
With mounting fear of a wider conflict in the Middle East, the US military said on Sunday its fighter aircraft shot down an antiship cruise missile fired from Houthi militant areas of Yemen towards a US destroyer operating in the Southern Red Sea.
The midair interception is the latest incident in the Red Sea where the Houthis have been attacking international shipping in what they say is a campaign to support Palestinians under siege from Israeli forces in Gaza.
It follows a series of US and British air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen last week that have drawn threats of a “strong” response from the Iranianbacked militia.
Houthi chief negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam told Reuters on Monday that the group’s attacks on shipping would continue until Israel halts its offensive in Gaza and humanitarian aid is allowed to flow freely into the Strip.