Qatar, France broker deal for aid, medication to Gaza
Qatar and France have brokered a deal with Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to deliver urgent medication to some 45 Israeli hostages held by the group in Gaza in return for humanitarian and medical aid for the most vulnerable civilians.
Israeli soldiers in Khan Yunis, Gaza. Photos by Elad Zagman/TPS
The two countries said the aid would leave Qatar for Egypt on Wednesday before being taken across the Rafah border crossing.
Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said in a statement the deal would mean “medicine along with other humanitarian aid is to be delivered to civilians in the Gaza Strip, in the most affected and vulnerable areas, in exchange for delivering medication needed for Israeli captives in Gaza.”
He did not give details on how much aid or what aid would be delivered to civilians.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said two Qatari Air Force planes were to land on Wednesday in Egypt with medicines purchased in France based on an Israeli list.
Earlier, Philippe Lalliot, head of France’s foreign ministry crisis centre, which organises aid efforts, said negotiations had been going on for weeks, and the initial idea had come from the families of some of the Israeli hostages.
Specific medical packages for several months, which were put together in France, would be delivered to each of the 45 hostages. The International Committee of the Red Cross will coordinate on the ground.
France still has three nationals held in Gaza, but none of them is in urgent need of medication, Lalliot said.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks have stormed back into parts of the northern Gaza Strip they had left last week, residents say, reigniting some of the most intense fighting since the New Year when Israel announced it was scaling back its operations there.
Massive explosions could be seen over northern areas of Gaza from across the border with Israel – a rarity over the past two weeks after Israel announced a drawdown of forces in the north as part of a transition to smaller, targeted operations.
The rattle of gunfire reverberated across the border through the night.
In the morning, contrails snaked through the sky as Israel’s Iron Dome defences shot down rockets fired by militants across the fence, proof they retain the capability to launch them despite more than 100 days of war.
Israel said its forces had killed dozens of Hamas fighters overnight in clashes in Beit Lahiya on Gaza’s northern edge.
Gaza health authorities said the last 24 hours of Israeli bombing had killed 158 people in the Palestinian enclave, raising their toll for the war – in its fourth month – to 24,285, with thousands more bodies feared lost in the rubble.
Under US pressure to reduce civilian casualties, Israel had said it was transitioning from a full-scale ground assault to targeted operations against the Hamas militants that control the enclave.
It began that shift with a pullback in the north.
Some of the hundreds of thousands of residents who fled the north earlier in the war had begun returning last week to bombed-out areas where the Israelis had withdrawn.
Israeli forces have fought their way to the centre of Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Younis, and into towns north and east of the central city of Deir al-Balah.
Israeli commando forces carried out targeted raids in Khan Younis to take out militant infrastructure, including offices of several senior regional Hamas commanders, the military said.
Defence Minister Gallant’s announcement on Monday that the major ground offensive in the south would end soon raises the question of whether the Israelis will still try to advance into remaining areas they have yet to enter.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crowded into those few areas, including Deir al-Balah and Rafah, which is located on the southern edge of the Strip bordering Egypt.
AAP
45 ??? hostages? .. what happened to the other 80?
These are the ones who need drugs