2023-11-06 08:32:01
DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops surrounded Gaza City on Monday morning and isolated the northern part of the besieged territory, while communications were gradually restored in the enclave following hours of interruption.
Troops were expected to enter the city on Monday or Tuesday, according to Israeli media, and there were expectations that militiamen trained for years would do battle street by street using an extensive network of tunnels. Casualties were likely to rise on both sides following a month of war, in which more than 9,700 Palestinians had already died, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Some 1.5 million Palestinians, or regarding 70% of the population, have fled their homes since the war began with a bloody Hamas incursion into Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running out, and UN schools converted into shelters are overwhelmed, so many people are sleeping on the streets around them.
For now, Israel has rejected US proposals to pause the fighting to facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries and the release of some of the approximately 240 hostages captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 assault. Israel has also rejected calls for a broader ceasefire from increasingly alarmed Arab countries such as Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with the country decades ago.
A Jordanian military cargo plane dropped medical supplies on a field hospital in northern Gaza, King Abdullah II said Monday morning. It appeared to be the first such air delivery of the war, and raised the possibility of opening another route for aid beyond the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
The situation remained difficult in the north. Some 800,000 people have followed Israeli army orders to flee to southern Gaza, although Israel has also continued airstrikes there. At least 53 people were killed on Sunday in bombings in central and southern Gaza, the supposed safe areas.
Hundreds of thousands of people remained in Gaza City and other areas of the north. About 2,000 people, many with only what they might carry, walked along the main highway between northern and southern Gaza on Sunday during a window of a few hours that the army had urged them to use to flee.
One man said they walked 500 meters (546 yards) with their hands up as they passed Israeli soldiers. Another described seeing dead bodies along the road. “The children saw tanks for the first time. Oh world, have mercy on us,” said a Palestinian who declined to give his name.
Most Gazans are descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel during the 1948 war over the country’s creation. Palestinians refer to that exodus as the Nakba, or catastrophe, and many fear it is being repeated as hundreds of thousands of people are displaced by the new war.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Najib Jobain in Khan Yunis, Amy Teibel in Jerusalem and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
1699262384
#Israeli #troops #surround #Gaza #City #isolate #north #besieged #enclave
