Macron in Israel and the West Bank, new Israeli bombardment in Gaza
French President Emmanuel Macron, visiting Israel on Tuesday, expressed his support for the country in the wake of the bloody Hamas attack and is also scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip that the Islamist movement says killed 140 people.
Israel, which has been relentlessly pounding the Palestinian territory in response to Hamas's unprecedented attack on its territory on 7 October, has intensified its bombardment as a prelude to a likely ground offensive.
After a visit to Israel, where he said the first objective must be the release of hostages held by Hamas and called for the conflict "not to widen", Emmanuel Macron will travel to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where he will be the first Western leader to meet Mahmoud Abbas at the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority since the start of the war.
In Israel, the French president was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his counterpart Isaac Herzog.
On Monday night, Hamas released two of the hostages kidnapped in Israel on October 7, at a time when the United States is urging the Palestinian movement to free its hostages before any talks on a truce.
The two freed women, Yocheved Lifschitz, 85, and Nourit Kuper, 79, are Israeli citizens of Kibbutz Nir Oz.
This release comes three days after the release of an American woman and her daughter.
Israel has counted around 220 Israeli, foreign and dual national hostages taken by Hamas in the Gaza Strip following its attack on Shabbat, the Jewish weekly day of rest, and on the last day of the Sukkot holidays.
Hundreds of Hamas fighters had infiltrated into Israel from Gaza, wreaking havoc in an attack unprecedented since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel, most of them civilians shot, burned or maimed on the day of the attack, officials said.
On Monday, Hamas claimed that 5,087 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 2,055 children, had been killed by Israeli retaliatory shelling since the start of the conflict, which has destroyed entire neighbourhoods and caused massive population displacements. AFP has not been able to independently verify this figure.
"Complete dismantling"
Israel has vowed to "annihilate" Hamas, which seized power in 2007 in the Gaza Strip, an impoverished territory that has been under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade ever since.
"We want to completely dismantle Hamas, its leadership, its military wing and its operational mechanisms," Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, surrounded by several armed men, said in a video posted on X by the Israeli military on Monday night.
Attacks have intensified in recent days in the 362-square-kilometre territory that is home to 2.4 million Palestinians, who are also under a siege imposed by Israel on 9 October that deprives them of food, water and electricity.
Hamas announced on Tuesday morning that at least 140 people had been killed during another night of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip, which also left "hundreds wounded" and destroyed "dozens of homes".
The Israeli army announced it had struck "more than 320 military targets" on Sunday night, including infrastructure belonging to Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad. Both groups are classified as "terrorists" by the US, the EU and Israel.
International aid has been trickling in since Saturday via Egypt. On Monday, a third convoy crossed the border at Rafah, the only crossing into Gaza not under Israeli control.
In all, some 50 trucks have been able to enter in three days, although the UN says at least 100 a day are needed.
35 aid workers killed
The US, which secured the agreement of Israel and Egypt to allow the aid through, announced on Sunday that "there will be a continuous flow from now on". But for EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell, "more aid is needed, more quickly", as well as a "humanitarian pause" to allow distribution.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also called on Monday for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" in Gaza, where 35 aid workers have been killed since the start of the conflict, six of them in the last 24 hours, according to the UN.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, whose country has not explicitly condemned the Hamas attack, told his Israeli counterpart, Eli Cohen, in a telephone conversation on Monday that "all countries (had) the right to defend themselves". "The most urgent task now is to prevent the situation from worsening," he added.
The Israeli army is continuing preparations for a ground offensive, concentrating soldiers on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip and conducting limited raids to target Hamas infrastructure and try to locate missing or abducted people.
This is a worrying prospect for the international community, which fears an escalation of the conflict.
Hamas ally Iran has warned that the situation in the Middle East could spiral "out of control", while the US has stepped up its military presence in the region.
Attacks in the south
Since 15 October, the Israeli army has been asking civilians in the northern Gaza Strip, where shelling is most intense, to flee southwards.
However, attacks also continue to hit the south, near the Egyptian border, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are concentrated.
The humanitarian situation is "catastrophic", the UN warned, in the territory where at least 1.4 million Palestinians have fled their homes.
"They put my son's mangled body in a blue bag, Cham was burnt," said Ayman Abou Chamalah, a 34-year-old Palestinian who survived a bombing in Rafah that killed two of his children and his wife.
In Lebanon, more than 19,000 people have been displaced following intensified fighting between the Israeli army and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, on the border between the two countries, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
The border area on the Israeli side has also been evacuated.