Israel-Hamas war: List of key events, day 80 | Israel-Palestine conflict News

EXPLAINER

A Christmas of bloodshed in Gaza amid raids in the occupied West Bank – here the are major updates.

Here’s how things stand on Monday, December 25, 2023:

Latest developments

• An air raid on central Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp on Sunday killed at least 70 people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Several homes in the area were also flattened.
• United States-led maritime coalition will help stabilise shipping in the Red Sea despite Houthi attacks, but Egypt will “lose 30 percent of its hard currency assets from Suez Canal transit fees as long as this is closed”, David Des Roches, from the National Defense University in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera on Monday.
• Demonstrators in Rabat, Morocco, mobilised one of the largest pro-Palestine marches on Sunday, demanding an end to Morocco’s diplomatic ties with Israel, reported Reuters news agency.

Human impact and fighting

• An Israeli military official told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday that the army’s battle to take control of Khan Younis could take months because of Hamas’s guerrilla tactics.
• United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, said on Sunday that “genocide is a process, not a single act”, which the world is allowing in Gaza.
• Overnight raids across the occupied West Bank continued, including in Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Hamdah Salhut. In Jenin, there were also heavy exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian resistance fighters.
• In a statement released on Sunday, Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, claimed it killed at least 48 Israeli soldiers over the last four days.
• Israel’s military claimed on Sunday that it recovered the bodies of five captives from an underground tunnel network in northern Gaza.

Diplomacy

• Pope Francis decried the “futile logic of war” in a Christmas message posted to X on Sunday.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed reports that the United States had convinced Israel not to expand its military activity during a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, reported Reuters.
• Iran denied on Saturday US accusations that it was involved in planning attacks by Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthi movement on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported.