© Reuters. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip December 29, 2023. REUTERS/Fadi Shana
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Arafat Barbakh
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli tanks pushed deeper into central and southern Gaza on Saturday under heavy air and artillery fire, residents said, launching a deadly offensive that leveled much of of the enclave and which, according to Israel, could last for months.
The fighting was concentrated in al-Bureij, Nuseirat, Maghazi and Khan Younis, supported by intensive airstrikes that filled hospitals with wounded Palestinians.
The bombardment killed 165 people and injured 250 others in Gaza over the past 24 hours, health authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory said.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the largest and most important medical facility in the south of the tiny and overcrowded territory, a Red Crescent video showed paramedics rushing to a small, dust-covered baby in a busy hospital while one of them shouted “there’s breathing, there’s breathing”.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents were forced from their homes by the 12-week Israeli assault, sparked by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and placed 240 hostages in the hands of the group.
The offensive has killed at least 21,672 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, with more than 56,000 injured and thousands more dead under the rubble.
The conflict risks spreading across the region, attracting Iran-aligned groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, which have exchanged fire with Israel and its US ally, or targeted shipping. merchants.
The bombings destroyed homes, apartment buildings and businesses and put hospitals out of service. On Saturday, the Palestinian Culture Ministry said Israeli strikes hit a medieval public bathhouse. The old Grand Mosque was hit at the start of the war.
Ziad, a doctor in Maghazi in central Gaza, was planning to flee with his family of three children. The only route still open for them was the coastal road through Deir al-Balah, already crowded with displaced people.
But he said they would continue directly to Rafah, on the border with Egypt, fearing a new Israeli attack on Deir al-Balah. “We want a ceasefire now. Not even tomorrow. It’s already enough, more than enough,” he said.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday that troops were reaching Hamas command centers and weapons depots. Images released by the army showed soldiers moving on dirt among the ruins of destroyed buildings.
The Israeli military said it destroyed a tunnel complex in the basement of one of Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar’s homes in Gaza City.
The United States has called on Israel to scale back the war in the coming weeks and launch targeted operations against Hamas leaders, although so far it shows no signs of doing so.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday approved the sale of more artillery shells and other equipment to Israel without congressional review, the Pentagon said.
HELP
Israel said Friday it had facilitated the entry of vaccines into Gaza in coordination with UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, to help prevent the spread of the disease.
What little aid has reached the enclave since the start of the war, when Israel imposed a near-total blockade on all food, medicine and fuel, has crossed the border with Egypt.
Israel only allowed access to the south of the enclave, where it began ordering all Gaza civilians to leave starting in October, and humanitarian agencies said Israeli inspections had prevented the entry of almost all of the necessary supplies.
An Israeli government spokesperson said Friday that it was not limiting humanitarian aid and that the problem lay in its distribution inside Gaza.
Al-Bureij, Nuseirat and Khan Younis are three of eight Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza that normally receive services from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The agency cares for Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948 and who live in camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. .
South Africa on Friday asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an urgent order declaring that Israel had failed to fulfill its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its crackdown on Hamas in Gaza.
He called on the Court to take short-term action ordering Israel to stop its military campaign “in order to protect against further serious and irreparable damage to the rights of the Palestinian people.”
No date has been set for a hearing.
In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry blamed Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza by using them as human shields and stealing humanitarian aid. Hamas denies these accusations.
PALESTINIAN JOURNALIST KILLED
A Palestinian journalist working for Al-Quds television was killed along with some members of his family on Friday in an airstrike on their home in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, officials said. health and fellow journalists.
The Gaza government’s media office says 106 Palestinian journalists were killed during the Israeli offensive.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said last week that the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war were the deadliest on record for journalists, with the highest number of journalists killed in a single year in one place.
Most of the journalists and media workers killed during the war were Palestinian. The report from the US-based CPJ said it was “particularly concerned about an apparent trend of targeting journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”
Earlier this month, a Reuters investigation found that an Israeli tank crew killed a Reuters journalist, Issam Abdallah, and wounded six journalists in Lebanon on October 13 by firing two shells in quick succession as the journalists were filming cross-border bombings.
Israel has previously said it has never and will never deliberately attack journalists and does what it can to avoid civilian casualties, but the high death toll has sparked concern even among its allies the most faithful.
