Israel has once again attacked aid distribution queues in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 11 people. On Monday, the Israeli Army killed the head of the Gaza Emergency Services.

The deaths in the Gaza Strip this Monday exceeded 37,600, after one of the deadliest days this weekend with more than a hundred deaths, and waiting for the vague temporary estimate released yesterday by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to come true. “The high intensity stage of the war is going to end“said the president in a rare interview with local media for the program Los Patriotas on the right-wing Channel 14.

“This will happen very soon“he added. This Monday, in a similar tone, the Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli Army, Herzi Halevi, said he is approaching the moment when Israel will be able to announce the dismantling of the Hamas Brigade in Rafah as a “unit of combat”, after more than a month and a half of intense air attacks and ground presence in this southern area.

“We are clearly approaching the point where we will be able to say that we have dismantled the Rafah Brigade, which is not defeated in the sense that there are no more terrorists left, but in the sense that can no longer function as a combat unit“said Halevi after an evaluation visit to Rafah last night. From Washington, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with White House advisor Amos Hochstein to discuss the details of the so-called transition to ‘Phase C’. ‘ of the war, focused on the “new security reality” that should be established once the fighting is over.

As Gallant warned Hochstein, this third phase of the war in Gaza – after a first of air strikes and a second of ground incursions – “will have an impact on all sectors” and Israel would be preparing “for all possibilities, military and policies”. One of the biggest unknowns remains, once the fire and massacres in the Strip subside, whether the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah will also stop its attacks on Israel’s northern border, and whether the latter will in turn stop its bombings against civilians and members of the militia, backed by Iran. For days, military sources cited by the Hebrew press have predicted at least three to four weeks to finish off the two Hamas battalions that are estimated to remain intact in Rafah, the southernmost part of the Palestinian enclave. It is unknown what will happen next in this supposed third phase of the war.

In the Strip, at least three Palestinians died this afternoon in a new bombing against the Al Shati refugee camp, in the devastated northern city of Gaza, while another eight, including at least one child, died in a fighter jet attack Israelis against the east of Khan Yunis (south), Palestinian sources informed EFE.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, of the Hamas Government, these deaths are in addition to another 28 in the last 24 hoursafter a night of intense bombing, especially in the center and north of the Strip, where the bombing of a clinic last night killed two Palestinians, including the director of Gaza’s ambulance and emergency services, Hani Al Jaafarawi.

“The Israeli threat ignores all international conventions and treaties“, criticized Health in a statement when announcing the death of Al Jaafarawi. In addition, the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen, with 96% of women and children between 6 and 23 months of age unable to meet their nutritional needs due to an extreme lack of dietary diversity, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

In total, authorities estimate that some 3,500 children are at risk of death from malnutrition and lack of food, according to the Gazan Government, and that some 3,000 patients – of all ages – suffering from various diseases require treatment abroad. More than 15,800 Gazan children have already died in this war, according to the Health registry, of which around thirty have died due to starvation and malnutrition.

To them we must add, according to the NGO Save the Children, about 21,000 children whose whereabouts are unknown in Gaza, many of them trapped under rubble, presumed dead, in unmarked mass graves or surviving without adults. “It is almost impossible to collect and verify information under the current conditions in Gaza,” the organization indicates in a report published today, but it estimates that some 17,000 children are currently alone, orphaned or separated from their parents, due to constant forced displacement.