About sixty bodies were found yesterday Thursday under the debris in Shujaya, an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, after the end of a large-scale operation by the Israeli armed forces that caused widespread destruction in the sector, the civil protection of the Palestinian enclave announced.

In the tenth month of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, they were held yesterday Thursday in Qatar, a country that mediates together with Egypt and the US in the indirect negotiations between them, new talks during which, according to US President Joe Biden, there was “progress”.

The purpose of the months of fruitless negotiations is to conclude a cease-fire agreement and freeing hostages who had been kidnapped when Hamas’ military arm launched a raid on southern sectors of Israeli territory, triggering the armed conflict.

In the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army announced last Wednesday evening that it had completed the operations it had been conducting since June 27 in Shujaya, in the eastern city of Gaza, assuring that during their duration destroyed “eight tunnels” and eliminated “dozens of terrorists”.

Following the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the Civil Protection of the Gaza Strip announced on Thursday that “about sixty witnesses” were found in the rubble.

“85% of properties” in the district are now “uninhabitable”, without taking into account all the infrastructure that was “demolished”, the representative of the civil protection, Mahmoud Basal, emphasized in a statement.

The Israeli army yesterday ordered all residents to leave the city urgently, in other words 300,000 to 350,000 people, according to the UN.

In the leaflets that he flew from the air, he warned that the city, where in early January he assured that he had “completed the dismantling of the military structure” of Hamas, remains a “dangerous battle zone”.

Yesterday he announced that continues its operations in the central part of Gaza City, targeting militants “at the headquarters of UNRWA,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

According to the same source, as well as AFP journalists, yesterday there were also battles and shelling in the western part of the city.

The unprecedented raid by Hamas’ military arm in southern Israel on October 7 left 1,195 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

Of the 251 people kidnapped during it, 116 remain hostages in the Gaza Strip, but 42 are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

In retaliation, Israel vowed to wipe out Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007.

In the large-scale Israeli military operations since then in the Gaza Strip, at least 38,345 people, most of them civilians, have lost their lives, according to the figures released yesterday by the enclave’s health ministry.

In his report made public yesterday, the Israeli army acknowledged its “failure” in the Hamas attack at Kibbutz Beeri on October 7.

The investigation carried out “clearly shows the extent of the failure and devastation suffered by the people of the south, who defended their families with their bodies for hours, as the army was not there to protect them”, stressed its leader general staff of national defense.

At the same time, yesterday the army announced that continues operations in the southern sector of the Palestinian enclave, in Rafah, on the closed border with Egypt, assuring that his elements “eliminated dozens of terrorists”, among them one he named as “Hassan Abu Quik” and presented as the head of the Hamas security forces, responsible for “numerous terrorist attacks’ against Israel.

Four corpses, among them that of a child, were taken to Rafah’s Nasser Hospital following Israeli shelling in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in the western part of the city, according to the health structure’s directorate.

In the central part of the Gaza Strip, four more people were killed in a shelling of the Nuseirat refugee camp, the Health Ministry of the Hamas government said.

As the humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave continues to be described as catastrophic, quantities of aid have been abandoned on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom outpost, with the UN and Israel blaming each other for the impasse over its distribution.

At the diplomatic level, negotiators continue efforts to conclude a ceasefire agreement.

“These are difficult, complicated issues. There are still gaps to be bridged. We are making progress. The trend is positive and I am determined to achieve this agreement, to end this war, which must end now,” US President Joe Biden said yesterday at the press conference he gave in Washington after the end of the NATO summit.

Hamas made a concession on Sunday, announcing that it no longer considers declaring a permanent ceasefire a necessary condition to hold negotiations for the release of hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to say that with or without a deal, he will continue the war “until all the goals” that have been set are achieved, in other words the elimination of Hamas and the release of all hostages.

Last night, he said his government intended to maintain zone control on the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, which was seized in early May, to prevent “weapons smuggling” to Hamas forces from Egyptian territory.

This demand, to maintain control of “the Philadelphia Corridor and the Rafah crossing point,” is part of the “four principles” that Israel set out in the negotiations, Mr. Netanyahu added, while Hamas for its part demands that the Israeli army withdraw from this zone.