The Israeli military continued to shell the Gaza Strip today as a Hamas delegation is expected in Egypt to discuss a plan to declare a cease-fire, which also includes the release of hostages held by militants of the Palestinian Islamist movement..

On the night of Thursday into Friday, Chahal multiplied the strikes in the Palestinian enclave, especially in Rafah, where residents ran into the piles of rubble in search of survivors.

“We were sitting quietly (at home) when suddenly we heard a loud explosion and debris started falling on us,” Taysir Abu Al-Ais described to AFP. “Our apartment was completely destroyed, my daughters were screaming. There are many victims (…) We are trying to get neighbors out of the ruins, but there are witnesses.”

South of Jerusalem, a Palestinian wounded two Israeli security forces, a 20-year-old and a 25-year-old, in a knife attack before falling dead, according to police and first aid workers, with Hamas singling out the “heroic operation” in ” retribution’ for the destruction in the Gaza Strip.

Conversations in Cairo

A Hamas delegation is expected in the Egyptian capital today to discuss Cairo’s three-phase plan. This provides for renewable ceasefires, gradual releases of hostages and in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and, ultimately, a ceasefire that will end the hostilities.

The war, sparked by a bloody October 7 attack on southern areas of Israeli territory by the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement, has claimed the lives of 21,320 people in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of the victims being women. and children, according to the health ministry of the Hamas government in power in the enclave since 2007.

In Israel, the attack by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades killed some 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli statements. Another 250 or so people were abducted and taken to the Gaza Strip, where more than 120 remain in captivity, according to Israeli authorities.

In Cairo, the Hamas delegation will deliver to Egyptian mediators “the response of the Palestinian factions, which contains several observations, to their plan,” a senior official of the movement told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The comments concern how the “anticipated exchanges” will be carried out, “the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released”, as well as “ensuring guarantees for the complete withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip”, he added.

“We are in contact (with the mediators) even at this moment. I can’t give more details. We are working to bring them all back. This is our purpose,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told family members of hostages in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

The oldest hostage

What was billed as the oldest hostage in the Gaza Strip, Israeli-American Judith Weinstein Hagai, 70, was pronounced dead Thursday by her kibbutz, Nir Oz, on the border of the Gaza Strip.

A mother of four, grandmother of seven, an English teacher for children with special abilities, according to her kibbutz, she had grown up in Toronto and was also a Canadian citizen.

Earlier this week, the kibbutz where she lived announced the death of Gandhi’s husband Hagai, also a hostage in Gaza, where their bodies remain.

The population of the Gaza Strip is at “great risk”, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday, as “hunger and desperation” worsen in the enclave where nearly two million people – 85% of the population – have been forced to leave their homes.

Many have been repeatedly displaced, driven to the streets by the spread of fighting from north to south and the Israeli military’s emergency civilian evacuation orders. However, without being able to escape from the incessant shelling.

In recent days, as Israeli operations intensified in Khan Younis (south) and the central part of the enclave, “at least 100,000 people” have fled Rafah, on the southern edge of the enclave, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). .

“What Israel is doing to the Palestinians, above all in Gaza, is the ‘monstrosity of our century'” and now “the tolerance of the West is turning into complicity”, said Francesca Albanese through X (the former Twitter), United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories.

Humanitarian aid, the entry of which is controlled by Israel, is arriving only in very limited quantities, despite the decision of the UN Security Council on 22 December.

Israel announced yesterday Thursday that it has reached an agreement “in principle” with Cyprus to open a sea corridor that will connect the island with the besieged Palestinian enclave.

At Damascus airport

The war in the Gaza Strip has skyrocketed tensions across the Middle East, especially on the Israel/Lebanon border, where the Israeli general staff referred to a possible “expansion of fighting.”

The army spoke of repeated fire from southern Lebanon on northern Israel, where air defense sirens had been sounding since midday yesterday, and said it had launched strikes against Hezbollah “positions”.

And, late last night, the Syrian Ministry of Defense announced that an Israeli airstrike had taken place in the suburbs of Damascus and in the southern part of the country.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the targets were a Syrian air defense position in the Sweida area (south) and the outskirts of Damascus International Airport, less than 24 hours after its re-opening, following the suspension of flights due to a previous Israeli strike on end of November.

Israel, which rarely comments on reports of raids in Syria, has multiplied its strikes in its neighboring country, targeting above all Iranian and pro-Iranian forces.

Iran has threatened Israel that there will be “immediate” actions and others from the “front of resistance” against it, after the death of a senior officer of the Revolutionary Guards, Razi Mousavi, in a missile strike in Syria. His burial took place yesterday Thursday in Tehran.

Another front: Yemen, from where the Shiite Houthi rebels, allies of Tehran, continue to attack ships in the Red Sea, blocking international shipping in a show of support for the “brothers” in Gaza. An American warship shot down a drone and a ballistic missile belonging to the Shiite rebels last Thursday night.