2023-12-04 08:58:02
DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli military on Monday renewed its calls for mass evacuations in the southern town of Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians had taken refuge in recent weeks, as it expanded its ground offensive. and bombed targets throughout the Gaza Strip.
The expanded offensive following the collapse of a week-long ceasefire aimed to eliminate Hamas, which rules Gaza and whose Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked the worst violence in decades between Israelis and Palestinians. The war has already killed thousands of Palestinians and displaced three-quarters of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the territory, leaving them with no safe places to go.
Israel, already facing increasing pressure from its main ally, the United States, appeared to be rushing to deal a death blow to Hamas—if that was even possible, given the group’s deep roots in Palestinian society—before another cessation. fire. But the costs of the fighting, which health authorities say has killed hundreds of civilians since the truce ended on Friday, increased pressure for him to return to the negotiating table.
The campaign might also leave even more areas of the isolated enclave uninhabitable.
The ground offensive has turned much of the north, including much of Gaza City, into a desolate wasteland littered with rubble. Hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter in the south, which might suffer the same fate, and both Israel and neighboring Egypt have refused to accept refugees.
Residents reported hearing airstrikes and explosions in and around Khan Younis overnight and on Monday morning following the army dropped leaflets warning people to move further south towards the Egyptian border. . In an Arabic social media post, the military on Monday once more ordered the evacuation of nearly two dozen neighborhoods in and around Khan Younis.
Halima Abdel-Rahman, a widow and mother of four, said she had stopped following those orders. In October she fled her home to an area outside Khan Yunis, where she was staying with relatives.
“The (Israeli) occupation tells you to go to this area, then they bomb it,” he said by phone on Sunday. “The reality is that nowhere is safe in Gaza. They kill people in the north. They kill people in the south.”
The death toll in the territory since October 7 has exceeded 15,500 people, with more than 41,000 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The ministry does not distinguish between deaths of civilians and combatants, but said 70% of those killed were women and children.
A Health Ministry spokesperson said hundreds of people had been killed or injured since the ceasefire ended on Friday morning. “Most of the victims are still under the rubble,” Ashraf al-Qidra said.
The Palestinian Civil Defense Department said an Israeli strike had killed three of its rescuers in Gaza City early Monday. The Palestine Red Crescent rescue service said one of its volunteers had been killed and an employee wounded in an attack on a home in the Jabalia urban refugee camp, also in the north.
An Associated Press journalist in the central town of Deir al Balah heard gunshots and the sound of tanks south of the line marking the area where northern Palestinians had been told for weeks to evacuate, although there was no visual confirmation on a first moment. The military rarely commented on troop deployments.
Hopes of reaching another temporary truce disappeared when Israel called its negotiators home over the weekend. Hamas said talks on freeing more of the dozens of hostages captured by Palestinian militants on Oct. 7 should be tied to a permanent ceasefire.
The previous truce facilitated the release of 105 of the approximately 204 Israeli and foreign hostages taken to Gaza in the October 7 attack, as well as the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israel. Most of the people freed by both sides were women and children.
The United States, along with Qatar and Egypt, which negotiated the previous ceasefire, said they were working on a longer truce.
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Magdy reported from Cairo.
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