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NOIDA: Policemen are deployed near a house where a 15-year-old girl was set on fire after being raped at Tigri village. — AFP
NOIDA: Policemen are deployed near a house where a 15-year-old girl was set on fire after being raped at Tigri village. — AFP
15-year-old raped, set on fire outside New Delhi
Zionist sniper kills 2 Christian Palestinian women seeking refuge in church

JERUSALEM: The Zionist entity kept up deadly strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and pleas from desperate relatives to bring home the remaining hostages.

The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said 24 Palestinians were killed by Zionist bombardment in Jabalia camp in the north, with many still “missing under the rubble”. It said at least 12 died in strikes on the central city of Deir al-Balah, while witnesses reported bombardment of Bani Suhaila east of Khan Yunis, Gaza’s second largest city, in the south.

Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again vowed “we will fight until the end. We will achieve all of our aims — eliminating Hamas, freeing all our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will not again become a center for terrorism.”

But French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was the latest envoy to call for an “immediate and durable” truce leading to a lasting ceasefire as she visited Tel Aviv, stressing that “too many civilians are being killed”.

Her British and German counterparts, David Cameron and Annalena Baerbock, also bemoaned the high civilian toll but said it was not the right time for a ceasefire because it would not be sustainable. “Calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent ... ignores why (the Zionist entity) is forced to defend itself: Hamas barbarically attacked (the Zionist entity) and still fires rockets to kill (Zionist) citizens every day. Hamas must lay down its arms,” they wrote in Britain’s Sunday Times.

The recent Gaza war started when Hamas fighters infiltrated through Gaza’s high-security border fence and launched an attack on the Zionist entity, which killed 1,139 people, according to revised Zionist numbers.

The Zionist retaliatory offensive, including over two months of aerial bombardment and a ground invasion, has killed 18,800 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry. The Zionist army says it has lost 121 soldiers in the ground operations that began late October.

Hospital ‘bloodbath’

Pope Francis deplored the death of a Christian mother and daughter reportedly shot dead by a Zionist soldier at Gaza’s only Catholic church, where families were sheltering. “A mother and her daughter ... were killed and other people injured by sniper fire,” the pope said.

“This happened even inside the parish of the Holy Family where there are no terrorists, but families, children, sick or disabled people.” The Zionist bombardment has left much of Gaza in ruins, with the UN estimating 1.9 million Gazans — some 85 percent — have been displaced by the war and warning of a “breakdown of civil order”.

“I would not be surprised if people start dying of hunger, or a combination of hunger, disease, weak immunity,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The UN’s World Health Organization also sounded the alarm after visiting the largest hospital, Gaza City’s Al-Shifa, weeks after it was raided by Zionist forces. The WHO team said the emergency department was “a bloodbath, with hundreds of injured patients inside, and new patients arriving every minute”.

“Patients with trauma injuries were being sutured on the floor,” the WHO said, while “tens of thousands of displaced people are using the hospital building and grounds for shelter” amid “a severe shortage” of water and food.

‘Russian roulette’

The Zionist government has come under growing pressure, including from its top ally the United States, but also from families of hostages, to either slow, suspend or end the military campaign. There are 129 hostages still in Gaza, the Zionist entity says, and relatives again rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday to call for an urgent deal to bring them home after the army admitted to mistakenly killing three captives in Gaza.

Ruby Chen, father of 19-year-old soldier Itai, who is among the captives, said: “We feel like we’re in a Russian roulette game (finding out) who will be next in line to be told the death of their loved one.”

Netanyahu said the killing of the three hostages “broke my heart. It broke the whole nation’s heart.” But he added that, “with all the deep sorrow, I want to clarify: the military pressure is necessary both for the return of the kidnapped and for achieving victory over our enemies”.

Talks involving mediator Qatar have resumed toward another truce like the one last month that saw scores of hostages exchanged for jailed Palestinians. News platform Axios said Zionist spy chief David Barnea met Friday in an unspecified European location with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Qatar in a statement Saturday reaffirmed its “ongoing diplomatic efforts to renew the humanitarian pause”. But Hamas said on Telegram it was “against any negotiations for the exchange of prisoners until the aggression against our people ceases completely”.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday he was travelling to the Zionist entity, Bahrain and Qatar to highlight Washington’s “commitments to strengthening regional security and stability”. – AFP

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