CAIRO, (Reuters) – Israeli forces pushed deep into the ruins of Gaza’s northern edge yesterday to recapture an area from Hamas fighters, while in the south tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah, leaving Palestinian civilians scrambling to find safety.
Some of the most intense fighting for weeks is raging in both the north and south. Israeli operations in Rafah, which borders Egypt, have closed a main crossing point for aid. Humanitarian groups say this has worsened an already dire situation.
Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing again. Around half of Gaza’s population took sanctuary there after Israel ordered evacuations from northern Gaza in October.
Gaza’s health authority appealed for international pressure to reopen access via the southern border to allow in aid, medical supplies and fuel to power generators and ambulances.
“The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no treatment and supplies and they cannot travel,” it said.
A foreign U.N. security staff member was killed on Monday when a U.N.-marked vehicle travelling to a hospital in Rafah was struck – the first international U.N. fatality in the Gaza war, a U.N. spokesperson said, bringing the total death toll of U.N. personnel to around 190.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago, Israeli forces pushed into an area where they claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago.
Residents fled along rubble-strewn streets carrying bags of belongings. Tank shells landed in the centre of the camp and health officials said they had recovered 20 bodies from overnight airstrikes.
“We don’t know where to go. We have been displaced from one place to the next… We are running in the streets. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the tank and the bulldozer. It is on that street,” said one woman, who did not give her name. An Israeli air strike on a house in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip killed at least eight people, said Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson of the Gaza Civil Emergency Service. He said several other people were wounded and missing.
The Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000, with 57 killed in the past 24 hours, according to Gaza health officials, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Israeli troops are seeking to wipe out Hamas. A senior U.S. State Department official on Monday said Washington did not think that goal of total victory was “likely or possible.” The militant group, which has said it is committed to Israel’s destruction, burst into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
Hamas’ armed wing said because of Israeli bombardments it had lost contact with militants guarding four Israeli hostages, including U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who appeared in a video released by Hamas in late April.
Attending a Memorial Day ceremony on Monday to mark Israel’s fallen soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war against Hamas was a struggle to secure Israel’s “existence, liberty, security and prosperity”.
“Our war of independence is not over yet,” he said.
In Rafah, Israel stepped up aerial and ground bombardments on eastern areas, killing people in an airstrike on a house in the Brazil neighbourhood.
Residents said Israeli air and ground bombardments were intensifying and tanks had cut off the main north-south Salahuddin road.
“The tanks cut the Salahuddin road east of the city, the forces are now in the southeast side, building up near the built-up area. The situation is dreadful and the sounds of explosions never stopped,” said Bassam, 57, from the Shaboura neighbourhood in Rafah.
“People continue to leave Rafah … no place looks safe now and people do not want to escape at the last minute,” he told Reuters via a chat app.