Thousands have fled parts of Gaza City in recent days amid air strikes and advancing Israeli troops, new satellite imagery shows.
Israel’s advance comes as it prepares to mount a full-scale invasion of the city, where the UN says around one million Palestinians are sheltering, Sky News reported yesterday.
The reports of new ordeals for besieged enclave’s residents coincided with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz approving a plan for the conquest of Gaza City and authorising the call-up of around 60,000 reservists to carry it out.
Israel also gave final approval for a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank that would effectively cut the territory in two, and that Palestinians and rights groups say could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state.
In Gaza, the civil defence agency reported Israeli strikes and fire killed 48 people across the territory.
Satellite imagery shows that entire tent camps in southeast Gaza City were emptied between August 9 and 17 as families fled the renewed attacks.
Hundreds of tents have disappeared from camps in parts of Gaza City.
Sky News posted videos of air strikes on August 15 in southeastern Gaza on buildings next to a major tent camp.
By the following day, almost all the camp’s residents had fled, along with people sheltering at 30 other locations in the area.
At least 132 buildings were destroyed in less than one square kilometre of the city.
It’s unclear how much of the destruction was carried out by IDF bulldozers and how much was a result of air strikes.
The advances came as Hamas said it had approved a ceasefire deal presented by mediators Egypt and Qatar. Israel has yet to respond to the proposal.
Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his country’s military to prepare for a full-scale invasion and occupation of the city in order to ‘free Gaza from Hamas’.
The UN has said that the invasion risks ‘catastrophic consequences’ for the estimated 1m Palestinians in the city.
Gaza’s civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the situation was ‘very dangerous and unbearable’ in the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods of Gaza City, where he said ‘shelling continues intermittently’.
&uuid=(email))