Israeli tanks advanced deep into a city in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday after days of relentless shelling that forced tens of thousands of already displaced Palestinian families to flee in a new exodus.
A Palestinian journalist posted a photo of an Israeli tank near a mosque in the Bureij construction area that appears to have advanced from a garden in the eastern suburbs.
Further south, Israeli forces attacked the area around a hospital in the center of Khan Younis, the main city in the southern Gaza Strip, where residents fear a new ground push into the region crowded with families displaced by the 12-week war.
Palestinian health authorities said 210 people were confirmed killed in Israeli attacks in the past 24 hours, bringing the war’s death toll to 21,320 — nearly 1 percent of the area’s population. Thousands more who died are feared to be buried or lost in the rubble.
Israel has sharply increased its ground war in Gaza since before Christmas despite public appeals from its closest ally the United States to scale back the campaign in the closing weeks of the year.
It launched a war to destroy the Hamas movement that controls Gaza after fighters rampaged through Israeli cities on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages.
Smoke billows from Al Bureij in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli airstrike on Dec. 28. 2023. ATEF SAFADI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The main focus of the fighting is now in the southern central area of the wetlands that divide the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have been ordering civilians out for the past few days as their tanks advance.
Tens of thousands of people fleeing the large districts of Nusseirat, Bureij and Maghazi were heading south or west on Thursday to the already overcrowded city of Deir al-Balah along the Mediterranean coast, crowding into hastily constructed temporary tent camps. prompt.
“Over 150,000 people — small children, women with babies, the disabled & the elderly — have nowhere to go,” the main UN organization operating in Gaza, UNRWA, said in a social media post.
Palestinians evacuate Bureij with their belongings on Dec. 26, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Al-Masri/File Photo
The eastern part of Bureij was the theater of heavy fighting on Thursday morning, with Israeli tanks pushing in from the north and east, residents and militants said.
“The moment has come, I hope it won’t happen, but it seems that moving is a must,” said Omar, 60, who said he had to move with at least 35 family members.
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“We are now in a tent in Deir al-Balah because of this brutal Israeli war,” he told Reuters by phone, declining to give his second name for fear of reprisals.
Yamen Hamad, who has been living in a school in Deir al-Balah since fleeing the north, said those who had just moved from Bureij and Nusseirat were setting up tents in any open space.
Tents are erected for displaced Palestinians in a camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip on Dec. 27, 2023. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press
With food running out, he said he had made the perilous journey to Rafah near the Egyptian border to buy 55-pound sacks of flour for his family.
FIGHTING NEAR THE HOSPITAL IN KHAN YOUNIS
Khan Younis, the main southern town where Israeli forces advanced this month after a ceasefire collapsed, also came under heavy fire on Thursday morning from warplanes and tanks near al-Amal hospital, west of Israeli positions.
The Palestinian Red Crescent, which runs the hospital and has its headquarters nearby, said 10 Palestinians were killed and 12 wounded in a bombing there, the third attack to hit the area around the hospital in less than an hour.
Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis on December 27, 2023. Xinhua/Shutterstock
Residents said they believed Israeli forces were trying to trigger a new exodus ahead of further ground attacks.
Nearby at Nasser Hospital, the main hospital in Khan Younis and the largest still functioning in the enclave, women and children screamed as the dead and wounded were brought in.
A small child lies motionless in a cot while doctors try to revive him; a doctor nodded “no,” indicating the boy was dead.
A woman holds two wailing, dust-covered girls by the side of a bed, while a baby wrapped in a bloody white shroud is placed at the foot of another body wrapped in a blanket.
An injured child at a hospital in Khan Younis after an Israeli attack on Dec. 28, 2023. REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
Israel reported three more soldiers killed, bringing its total casualties in the ground campaign to 169. The past week has seen some of the worst casualties of the war so far.
Almost all Gazans have been driven from their homes at least once and many have had to flee several times. Only a handful of hospitals are still functioning.
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Egypt, which has acted as a mediator including hosting the leader of Hamas last week, said it had submitted proposals to end the bloodshed, including a three-stage plan for a ceasefire, but had yet to hear back from the warring parties.
Israel says it will not stop its ground campaign until it destroys Hamas, describing it as the only option to safeguard its security and free the remaining 129 hostages.
Chen Almog-Goldstein, who was released last month after 51 days in custody with her three children kidnapped by Hamas gunmen who killed her husband and one of her daughters, said she feared hostages were still being held, especially women, some of whom were said to have been brutally abused. sexually assaulted by their captors.
“It was hell in there,” he said. The remaining hostages were “trying to keep their spirits up but when we got out, they were already on edge.”
Hamas denies torturing or sexually abusing the hostages.
Palestinians say eliminating Hamas is an unattainable goal given the militant group’s sprawling structure and deep roots in the region it has ruled since 2007.
Israel’s Western allies fear that a large civilian population will radicalize a new generation and spread chaos throughout the Middle East. This week, Iran-backed groups have attacked US troops in Iraq and commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
President Joe Biden warned this month that “indiscriminate bombing” is hurting sympathy for Israel among its allies.
Washington has said Israel should make a transition from a full-scale ground war to a targeted campaign against Hamas leaders.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
