The Gaza Strip lived this Sunday a day of relative calm, after the Israeli army announces a pause in its operations in an area of southern Gaza to allow more humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
After eight months of intense and incessant bombing, Gaza lived a day “almost quiet compared to the previous days”Civil Defense spokesman Mohamed Basal told AFP.
However, he reported “some bombings” against several neighborhoods of Gaza City,in the north, and artillery fire in Rafah,in the far south of the Palestinian territory, where the Israeli army began a ground offensive in early May.
However, the Israeli army noted that despite “the tactical pause”, “There is no cessation of hostilities in southern Gaza and operations in Rafah continue”.
The daily pause was announced the day after the death of 11 Israeli soldiers, eight of them in a bomb explosion in the Gaza Strip, mired in a bloody war triggered by the bloody attack by the Palestinian movement Hamas on October 7 in Israel.
The pause “will take place from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (05:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. GMT) every day and until further notice,” in the area from Kerem Shalom, a border crossing in southern Israel, to the Salahedin highway, in Gaza, and towards the north of the Palestinian territory, the army said.
That decision was made to allow a “increased volume of humanitarian aid entering Gaza”after discussions with the UN and other organizations, he indicated in a statement.
“Concrete measures”
The UN said that “celebrates” this measure but requested that this “lead to new concrete measures” to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid, said Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The international organization has repeatedly warned that aid is difficult to reach the population, who suffer from shortages of water, food and medicine due to fighting and Israeli restrictions.
The Gaza Strip,besieged by Israelis mired in a serious humanitarian crisis, where 75% of its 2.4 million inhabitants have had to be displaced by war and the population is threatened with famine, according to the UN.
“The person who made the decision to institute a pause while our soldiers fall in combat is evil and stupid”denounced the far-right Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir.
The Israeli army announced on Saturday the death of eight of its soldiers in Gaza when the armored vehicle in which they were traveling “He was hit by a bomb explosion” in Rafah, two soldiers in northern Gaza and another who succumbed to his injuries.