Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories: Heavy urban combat raged in and around Gaza’s biggest cities Thursday as the bloodiest ever war between Israel and Hamas entered its third month since the October 7 attacks.
Vast areas of the besieged territory have been reduced to a rubble-strewn wasteland of bombed-out or bullet-scarred buildings as the death toll has soared above 16,200 according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Israeli forces backed by air power, tanks and armoured bulldozers were fighting Hamas in Khan Yunis, the biggest city in southern Gaza, as well as in Gaza City and the nearby Jabalia district in the north.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said troops had closed in on the Khan Yunis house of Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, 61, and vowed that, although he could flee, “it is only a matter of time until we find him”.
Air strikes also rained down on Rafah in Gaza’s far south, a city near the Egyptian border that has been turned into a vast camp for many of the 1.9 million internally displaced Palestinians.
One of those on the move, Khamis Al-Dalu, told AFP that he had first fled Gaza City and then Khan Yunis for Rafah, where his family was now sheltered in a tent against the worsening winter chill.
“There was bombardment, destruction, leaflets dropped, threats and phone calls to evacuate and to leave Khan Yunis,” he said about Israeli army warnings. “Where do you want us to go for God’s sake?”
Eight more air strikes hit Rafah overnight, an AFP correspondent said, as the health ministry reported at least 37 people killed and many more wounded.
Searching for survivors and bodies in the dusty rubble, bereaved relatives carried away the remains of a little girl, wrapped in thin, flower-patterned fabric, said an AFP journalist.
– ‘Complete breakdown’ –
Mass civilian casualties in the war have sparked global concern, heightened by dire shortages caused by an Israeli siege that has seen only limited supplies of food, water, fuel and medicines enter.
On Wednesday, Israel approved a “minimal” increase in fuel supplies to Gaza, to prevent a “humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip”, said Netanyahu’s office.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned he expects “public order to completely break down soon due to the desperate conditions” in Gaza, with “potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole”.
Fighting raged on unabated as Israeli forces pushed on in their battle to kill fighters and destroy their infrastructure, arms depots and tunnel shafts, hundreds of which it said it had blown up.
Three more Israeli soldiers were killed, raising the toll inside Gaza to 86, said the military.
The army said in a morning briefing that troops had killed Hamas fighters and struck dozens of targets in Khan Yunis and raided a military compound of Hamas’s Central Jabalia Battalion.
Israeli naval forces had also “struck Hamas military compounds and infrastructure using precise ammunition and firing shells”.
Hamas released footage of its fighters shooting AK-47 assault rifles and rocket launchers from inside abandoned buildings in what it said was Gaza City as fires flare outside and smoke billowed into the sky.
The group said on social media channel Telegram that its fighters were engaged in fierce battles against Israeli troops “on all axes of the incursion into the Gaza Strip”.
It said it had destroyed two dozen military vehicles in Khan Yunis and Beit Lahia in the north of the territory.
Rocket fire from inside Gaza has continued to target Israel, where the projectiles have been intercepted by air defences.