Author: Nidal Mugrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in aerial and ground bombardments in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, health officials and Hamas media said, as they clashed with Hamas leaders in the southern city of Rafah. The militants engaged in close combat.
Residents said Israeli tanks advanced southeast of Rafah, toward the Ibuna district in the west of the city, and continued in the three eastern suburbs.
“The occupation forces (Israeli forces) are trying to push further west, and they are on the edge of densely populated Ibuna. They have not invaded yet,” said a resident who asked not to be named.
“We heard explosions and saw black smoke rising from the area where the army was invading. It was another very difficult night,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Israel’s simultaneous attacks on Gaza’s northern and southern edges this month have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes and cut off key aid routes, raising the risk of famine.
The Israeli attack on Gaza follows an October 7 attack on southern Israeli communities led by Hamas that killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages, according to Israeli statistics. Since then, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 35,000 people and buried thousands under rubble, according to Gaza health authorities.
Rafa’s hostage
Israel said it had no choice but to attack Rafah to root out the last few Hamas militants it believed were holed up there.
“Hamas is in Rafah and Hamas has been taking our hostages in Rafah, which is why our forces are maneuvering in Rafah,” Major General Daniel Hagari, Israel’s chief military spokesman, said in a statement. We are doing this in a targeted and precise manner.
“We are protecting Gaza civilians in Rafah from becoming a layer of protection for Hamas, encouraging them to temporarily evacuate to humanitarian areas… So far we have eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists, Expose dozens of terrorist tunnels and destroy tons of terrorists.
Hagari told a televised press conference that so far, Israeli forces have killed about 180 militants in Rafah.
UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, estimated that more than 800,000 people had fled Rafah as of Monday since Israel began targeting the city in early May, despite international calls for restraint.
Suze van Meegen, head of emergency response in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said many civilians are still trapped.
“The city of Rafah now consists of three completely different worlds: the eastern part is a typical war zone, the central part is a ghost town and the western part is crowded with people and poor living conditions,” she said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces stepped up their ground offensive in Jabaliya, where troops razed several neighborhoods and attacked the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, an area where Israel announced a major operation months ago. Israel says it must return to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.
Hamas media said that an air strike on a Welfare Ministry store east of the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza corridor killed 12 Palestinians, and a residential building in Gaza City was hit by an air strike, killing another 10 people.
Medical staff said power was cut to all but the intensive care unit and neonatal unit at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza corridor due to severe fuel shortages.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces began conducting targeted attacks in Beit Hanoun “to eliminate terrorists and locate and strike underground and above-ground terror infrastructure.”
Its operation allegedly killed Hamas Beit Hanoun battalion commander Hussein Fiyad in the underground area of Jabaliya in northern Gaza.
“Throughout the war, Fiyad fired numerous anti-tank missiles into Israeli territory and conducted massive mortar fire on nearby Israeli communities in the northern Gaza Strip,” the group said in a statement. .
The Interior Ministry of Hamas-controlled Gaza said a senior Hamas security official, Diaa Aldeen Al-Shurafa, was also killed in an Israeli attack while touring a residential area in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said three soldiers were killed in fighting on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 286 since the invasion of Gaza began on October 20.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi. Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing by Sharon Singleton and Diane Craft; Editing by Ros Russell and Josie Kao)
