This Sunday, Pope Francis reiterated his calls for an end to the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, the immediate release of the hostages and the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where the situation is “very serious.”
‘I keep thinking about the serious situation in Palestine and Israel, where many people lost their lives’ the leader of the Catholic Church said after the Angelus prayer before thousands of worshipers gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
“I ask you, in the name of God, to stop, to cease the fire. I hope that all options are explored so that the escalation of the conflict is absolutely avoided, that the wounded can be helped, that aid can reach Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is very serious, and that the hostages are released immediately,” continued he. .
The Pope has intervened several times since the start of the war, calling for an end to the fighting, the release of hostages and humanitarian aid to Gaza.
On October 7, the Palestinian movement Hamas – considered terrorist by the European Union, the United States and Israel – carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli territory, killing more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, and more than 200 hostages. who were held captive in the Gaza Strip.
Israel then began strong retaliation against that poor Palestinian enclave, controlled by Hamas since 2007, with cuts to supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel and daily bombardments, followed by a ground offensive that completed the siege on Thursday. Gaza.
In a report carried out on Saturday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that to that date, 9,488 people, including 3,900 children, had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war with Israel.
From the beginning of the escalation, Israel, citing security concerns, ordered the withdrawal of civilians living in the north of the narrow enclave in the south, leaving about 1.5 million Gaza residents – more than half of the total population – have fled in the context of a serious fuel shortage. .
However, Israeli forces continued to bomb the southern part of the Gaza Strip, where living conditions for Gaza residents are becoming increasingly critical due to overcrowding, the collapse of hospitals and shortages of drinking water, food, medicine and electricity.
In turn, Hamas and other Palestinian militias continued to fire rockets into Israel, with sirens sounding even in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, although most of the projectiles were intercepted by air defense systems.
Source: DN
