Israel battled Hamas in the Gaza Strip’s biggest cities yesterday, leaving hundreds more Palestinians dead as almost two million displaced Gazans struggled to find safe refuge amid critical shortages of food and shelter.
Residents reported fierce battles going on east of Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s largest city and Palestinian health officials said three Gazans were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Deir Al Balah in central Gaza.
Israel said its forces killed a number of gunmen in Khan Younis, including two who emerged firing from a tunnel.
Israeli TV showed footage of what it said were captured fighters, sitting in a Gaza City street.
Some Palestinians recognised relatives and denied they had any links to Hamas or any other group. Hani Almadhoun, a Palestinian American based in Virginia saw relatives in the picture and told Reuters they were “innocent civilians with no links to Hamas or any other faction”.
“They took them from a house, that belongs to the family, in the area of the market. They detained my brother Mahmoud, 32, his son Omar, 13, my other nephew Aboud, 27, and my father 72, and several of our in-laws.”
Gazans have crammed into Rafah on the southern border with Egypt, heeding Israeli messages saying that they would be safe in the city after successive warnings to head south.
But more than 20 people were killed in apartments there late on Wednesday, said Eyad Al Hobi, a relative of some of those killed.
“All apartments in the building suffered serious damage,” he said as people brought out two apparently lifeless children.
Another relative, Bassam Al Hobi, said the building had been hit by three rockets and he gestured to bodies wrapped in white cloth, some small, on the ground and surrounded by mourners.
In Washington, a senior State Department official said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israel’s strategic affairs minister, and told him Israel needs to do more to protect civilians in its offensive in southern Gaza.
Israeli troops reached the heart of Khan Younis on Wednesday in a new phase of the war, now entering its third month. Health officials said three people were killed there yesterday.
Ambulances and relatives rushed the wounded into the city’s Nasser Hospital, but even the floor space inside was full. Two badly wounded children lay on a trolley and a bloodstained young boy lay screaming among the patients on the floor.
“The injuries are very severe,” said doctor Mohamed Matar. “The situation is catastrophic in all senses of the word...We can’t treat the injured in this state.”
Those who escape violence face an increasingly desperate struggle to survive.
Ibrahim Mahram, who fled to Al Mawasi, said five families were sharing a tent in the former Bedouin village, which refugee organisations say lacks shelter, food and other necessities.
“We suffered from the war of cannons and escaped it to arrive at the war of starvation,” he said.
The UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) said 1.9m people – 85 per cent of Gaza’s population – had been displaced and its shelters were four times over capacity.
UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said pressure was growing in the south of the enclave near Egypt.
“People are piling up in the little sliver of land between Khan Younis and the Rafah border,” he said.
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