Some 30,000 Palestinians have lost their lives in the Gaza Strip since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out almost five months ago, the Palestinian Islamist movement announced on Wednesday, with the enclave’s population under incessant bombardment, now threatened with famine.

The main mediators between the parties, Qatar and the USA, they say they hope so an armistice agreement will be concludedwhich will allow the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip, the release of Palestinian prisoners and the entry of more humanitarian aid before Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, begins around March 11.

The armed conflict, which has turned the small coastal enclave into a “killing ground” according to the UN, has long been, and by far, the deadliest of five between Israel and Hamas since the latter took power there , in 2007.

Every day, civilians are lost in battles and bombings, from which no area is spared. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to piles of rubble and 1.7 million Palestinians out of the 2.4 million total population of the Gaza Strip have been forced to flee their homes.

“For me, this is genocide. Who bombs apartment buildings, demolishes them on their occupants, basically civilians, children and women?’ said Jihad Salah, an IDP whom AFP met at a makeshift camp in Rafah, in the southern part of the enclave.

Since the outbreak of the war, 29,954 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the latest tally from the Hamas Health Ministry, released yesterday morning.

It was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on October 7, which left more than 1,160 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

During the attack, some 250 people were kidnapped and taken to the enclave. According to Israeli sources, more than 130 remain there, of whom 31 are believed to be dead, after more than 105 were released in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israel during a week-long truce in late November.

“Famine”

In retaliation, Israel vowed to “eliminate” Hamas, which, like the US and the EU, characterizes “terrorist organisation.

Today the government of New Zealand, one of the last Western countries not yet to take this step, announced that it now designates “the entirety” of Hamas, in other words both its military and political arms, a “terrorist entity”.

“We are doing everything within our power to bring the hostages back home. I believe that military pressure will bring back more hostages,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallad said yesterday.

After conducting a bombing campaign from land, sea and air, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive on October 27, initially in the north of the enclave, before moving south. Since then, he says he has lost 242 soldiers.

In the enclave, under Israeli siege since October 9, 2.2 million people, the vast majority of the population, are at risk of starvation, the United Nations warns, especially in the north, where the distribution of humanitarian aid is virtually impossible because of the disasters , of battles, of looting.

The UN also criticizes Israel’s obstruction of aid deliveries through Egypt, subject to its approval.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip are “limitless”.

“It is taking the form of a famine. Hospitals have turned into battlefields. One million children are faced with daily injury,” he emphasizes.

Yesterday Wednesday the representative of the Hamas Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Kudra, announced that two more children died due to “dehydration and malnutrition” at Ash Shifa Hospital in Gaza City (north). The number of children who died due to starvation rose to six in the past few days, he added.

The international community is increasingly concerned about the humanitarian catastrophe that would be caused by a ground attack — repeatedly announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — in Rafah, on the Gaza Strip’s closed border with Egypt, where some one and a half million internally displaced people are trapped. .

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he reiterates his army will defeat Hamas in its “last stronghold”, Rafah, within “a few weeks”, declaring that even if a ceasefire is declared, the offensive will not “delay”. He assures that the civilian population will be allowed to leave the battle zones, without specifying where they will go.

The target of daily Israeli bombardments lately, Rafah, which had some 270,000 inhabitants before the war, is the main gateway to the Gaza Strip, but its volumes are very limited.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) said it was discussing with Israeli officials the opening of “more transit points” for aid.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” chief executive Samantha Power explained via X (formerly Twitter).