Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants in Gaza’s two largest cities on Monday, with civilians still sheltering along the front line even after a huge wave of displacement across the besieged territory.
Israel has vowed to continue fighting until it removes Hamas from power, dismantles its military capabilities and returns all hostages still held by Palestinian militants after being captured during the October 7 surprise attack on Israel that sparked the war.
The US has provided unwavering diplomatic and military support for the campaign, although it has urged Israel to minimize civilian casualties and further mass evacuations.
The war has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and driven nearly 85% of the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants from their homes.
Palestinians mourn relatives killed in Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip outside a morgue in Khan Younis on Dec. 10, 2023. AP
Residents said there was heavy fighting in and around the southern town of Khan Younis, where Israeli ground forces opened a new line of attack last week, and fighting was still raging in parts of Gaza City and the Jabaliya refugee camp built in northern Gaza. , where large areas have been reduced to rubble.
“The situation is very difficult,” said Hussein al-Sayyed, who lives with relatives in Khan Younis after fleeing Gaza City at the beginning of the war. “I have children and I don’t know where to go. No place is safe.”
She and her three daughters live in a three-story house with about 70 others, many of whom have fled the north, and said they have been rationing food for several days. “For several days, I only ate once a day to save food for the girls. They are still young,” he said.
An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires shells from southern Israel toward the Gaza Strip, in a position near the Israel-Gaza border on Dec. 10, 2023. AP
Another resident of Khan Younis, Radwa Abu Frayeh, witnessed the heavy Israeli attack around the European Hospital, where the UN humanitarian office said tens of thousands of people had sought refuge. He said the strike hit a house near his home late Sunday.
“The building was shaking,” he said. “We thought it was the end and we were going to die.”
FEAR OF PERMANENT MOVEMENT
With little aid allowed in, Palestinians face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods.
The Israeli army prepares weapons and military vehicles by the border fence before entering the Gaza Strip on Dec. 10, 2023. AFP via Getty Images
Some observers openly fear that Palestinians will be forced out of Gaza altogether in a repeat of the mass exodus from what is now Israel during the 1948 war that surrounded its creation.
“Expect civil order to break down completely soon, and worse situations could occur including epidemics and increased pressure for mass evacuations to Egypt,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a forum in Qatar, a key intermediary, on Sunday.
Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, described claims that Israel intends mass evacuations from Gaza as “exaggerated and false.”
Palestinians carry an injured girl after being rescued from the rubble of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of the Gaza Strip, on November 1, 2023. AP
But other Israeli officials have discussed such a scenario, raising concerns in Egypt and other Arab countries that refuse to accept any refugees.
At the same time, it is unclear when or whether Palestinians will be allowed to return to Gaza City and much of the north – home to about 1.2 million before the war – where entire neighborhoods have been leveled.
Fighting in and around Khan Younis threatens to bring similar devastation to the south, and has pushed tens of thousands toward the city of Rafah and other areas along the border with Egypt.
An Israeli soldier loads a bullet into a tank outside the northern Gaza Strip. Reuters
It has also blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid to large parts of Gaza, putting more pressure on people to head south.
HARSH SITUATION IN THE SOUTH
Israel says it tries to avoid injuring civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas, saying it endangers residents by fighting in densely populated areas and placing military infrastructure – including weapons, tunnels and rocket launchers – in or near civilian buildings.
The military said Sunday that troops killed gunmen as they left a clinic, and that forces operating in Jabaliya found a truck full of long-range rockets near a school.
Palestinians work among the debris of a building targeted by an Israeli airstrike in the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of the Gaza Strip, on November 1, 2023. AP
In a house in Jabaliya, troops found rifles, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers and explosives, he said.
Israel has urged people to flee to what it says is safe areas in the south but continues to attack alleged militant targets across the region.
An Associated Press reporter saw nine bodies being taken to a local hospital on Monday after an airstrike hit a house in Rafah overnight.
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Aid group Doctors Without Borders said people in the south were also falling ill as they huddled in overcrowded shelters or slept in tents in the open.
Nicholas Papachrysostomou, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, said “every other patient” at a clinic in Rafah had a respiratory infection after prolonged exposure to cold and rain.
“In some shelters, 600 people share a single toilet. We have seen many cases of diarrhea. Children are often the worst affected,” he said.
With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,900, the majority women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-controlled territory.
The Ministry does not differentiate between the deaths of civilians and combatants.
About 1,200 people have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, during the October 7 offensive, in which Hamas and other militants also captured more than 240 people, including infants, women and older adults.
More than 100 prisoners were released during a week-long ceasefire late last month in exchange for women and minors held in Israeli prisons.
Israel said Hamas still had 117 hostages and the bodies of 20 people killed in captivity or during the October 7 attack.
Most of the remaining hostages are soldiers and civilian men, and the militants hope to exchange them for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The army says 101 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of the Gaza ground offensive.
Palestinian militants continued to fire rockets into Israel, although most were intercepted or landed in open areas without causing injury or damage.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
