The Israeli military is today intensifying its searches in al-Shifa in search of Hamas hideouts, which it suspects are hidden in Gaza’s largest hospital. The humanitarian situation is increasingly alarming, while telecommunications are now down due to fuel shortages.

Overnight, an AFP team reported a major Israeli operation in the Jenin camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed movements, in the occupied West Bank.

Also, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported that Israeli airstrikes caused “material damage” near Damascus, while Israel has several times in recent years hit positions on Syrian territory of militias close to Iran, a country that supports Hamas.

In the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government announced that Israeli soldiers had “destroyed” many services of Al Shifa Hospital, a huge complex located in Gaza City.

After Hamas’s deadly attack on Israeli soil on October 7, Israel swore to “annihilate” the Palestinian Islamist movement which has been designated a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Israel.

The Israeli military has since been relentlessly shelling the small besieged Palestinian enclave, which has been under Hamas control since 2007.

Today the Israeli army announced that found the body of a 19-year-old soldierwho was being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in a building near al-Shifa Hospital.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military confirmed the soldier’s death, after Hamas released a video on Monday showing her alive and then her body. The Palestinian organization claimed he was killed “in Israeli shelling”.

This is the second hostage body found by the Israeli army in less than 24 hours in the Gaza Strip.

Late yesterday, Thursday night, the Israeli army announced that it had found near the hospital the corpse of Yehudit Weissa hostage “killed by the terrorists in the Gaza Strip,” after she was abducted by Hamas on October 7 in Kibbutz Beeri, southern Israel.

Wednesday’s raid on al-Shifa hospital, which has been left without water and electricity while housing patients, medical staff and civilians fleeing the war, prompted urgent calls from the international community for the protection of the population.

According to the UN, 2,300 people are currently in hospital.

“Investigations on every floor”

For days now, Israel has been tightening the cordon on Gaza City and especially on its hospitals, accusing Hamas of using them as bases and their patients as “human shields”.

An Israeli army official announced that soldiers were “searching every floor, every building as hundreds of patients and medical staff are still inside the compound”.

“We are focusing on what is underground, including inside the hospitals. In this regard, our soldiers have found the tunnel entrance to the Al Shifa hospital and army engineers are excavating the infrastructure there,” the spokesman said late last night. of the Israeli army Daniel Hagari.

Israel says al-Shifa hospital houses strategic Hamas infrastructure, mostly in tunnels it has dug under the compound, which the Palestinian Islamist movement denies.

“Images related to the hostages” held by Hamas were found in material seized during the raid, the military added.

“We have strong indications that they (the hostages) were being held at al-Shifa hospital, and that is one of the reasons why we entered there. If the hostages were there, they were taken,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the American network CBS.

In Israel, about 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, according to authorities, in the bloody and unprecedented attack launched on October 7 by Hamas militants who invaded Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip.

Since the attack, 51 soldiers have been killed in the Palestinian enclave, according to the Israeli military, which estimates that around 240 hostages have been taken by Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli shelling in retaliation for the attack on the Gaza Strip has killed 11,500 people, mostly civilians, including 4,710 children, according to Hamas’ health ministry.

Telecommunications are out of order

Since October 9, Israel has imposed a “total siege” on the Palestinian enclave, cutting off supplies of water, electricity, food and medicine.

International aid is arriving in Gaza by the dropper in trucks from Egypt, in an amount the UN says is insufficient and is mainly asking for fuel to run generators in hospitals.

The head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said yesterday from Geneva that telecommunications had once again been “completely disrupted” with the Gaza Strip due to a lack of fuel.

“All telecommunications services in the Gaza Strip are now down because the energy sources that fed the network have been exhausted and fuel has not been allowed to enter,” the Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel announced late last night.

Early this morning AFP was unable to reach members of its team it tried to contact in the Gaza Strip, where, according to the UN, 1.65 of its 2.4 million residents have been displaced from the war.

Immediate danger of famine

“We have neither electricity, drinking water nor food (…) Thousands of women, children, the sick and wounded are at risk of dying,” said Hamas Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidreh.

“As winter approaches, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, as well as a lack of potable water, put civilians at immediate risk of starvation,” the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) warned yesterday.

Last night, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke by phone with Benny Gantz, an Israeli opposition leader who has joined Prime Minister Netanyahu’s wartime government, “about efforts aimed at increasing and accelerating the passage of much-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza,” according to Washington.

Delicate negotiations

In Israel, meanwhile, the pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu on the issue of hostages. A procession of their relatives, which started on Tuesday from Tel Aviv with a request for an agreement for their release, is expected to arrive in Jerusalem today, while negotiations are being carried out with the mediation of Qatar.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for the “immediate release” of the hostages during a visit Thursday to Beeri, where at least 85 people were killed and about 30 kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who says he is “in contact with Hamas and other international stakeholders and with Israel,” said the ongoing negotiations are “very delicate.”

Israel has so far refused any ceasefire without the prior release of the hostages. But exiled Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said Israel “has not achieved any of its goals” and would ensure “the release of the captives only at the price set by the resistance.”