Palestinian officials said an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza Strip killed dozens while advancing tanks in Gaza City forced residents to flee under fire as Israel yesterday stepped up an offensive that Hamas warned could jeopardise ceasefire talks.
The air strike hit the tents of displaced families outside a school in the town of Abassan east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least 29, most of them were women and children, Palestinian medical officials said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Ismail Al Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Israeli strikes on central Gaza areas killed 60 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others yesterday.
Residents said Israeli tanks that pushed into the Tel Al Hawa, Shejaia and Sabra neighbourhoods of Gaza City shelled roads and buildings, forcing them to flee their homes. This was followed by Israeli military orders to evacuate several districts in eastern and western Gaza City posted on social media, which included these neighbourhoods.
“We hold the occupation and the US administration responsible for the horrifying massacres against civilians,” said Thawabta in a statement.
On Gaza City’s front lines, the armed wings of Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad said their fighters battled Israeli forces with machine guns, mortar fire and anti-tank missiles and killed and wounded Israeli soldiers. Israel’s military did not comment on casualties but said its soldiers were engaged in close-quarter combat with fighters, had taken more than 150 fighters out of action in the last week and destroyed booby-trapped buildings and explosives.
The latest fighting has unfolded as senior US officials were in the region to push for a ceasefire after Hamas made concessions last week. But Israel’s renewed campaign threatened talks at a crucial time and could bring negotiations ‘back to square one’, Hamas quoted leader Ismail Haniyeh as saying.
Video on social media showed families packed onto donkey carts and in the backs of trucks piled with mattresses and other belongings making their way through Gaza City’s streets to flee areas under Israeli evacuation orders. “Gaza City is being wiped out. This is what is happening. Israel is forcing us to leave homes under fire,” Um Tamer, a mother of seven, told Reuters via a chat app.
She said it was the seventh time her family had fled their house in Gaza City, in the north of the enclave and one of Israel’s first targets at the start of the war in October. “We can’t take it anymore, enough of death and humiliation. End the war now,” she said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said all of its medical clinics were out of service in Gaza City due to the Israeli evacuation orders that have driven thousands of people westward towards the Mediterranean and to the south.
In Al Nuseirat in central Gaza, an Israeli air strike early yesterday on a house of several storeys killed 17 people, including 14 children and a woman, Hamas’ media office said.
“They were displaced during the night after Al Nuseirat camp school was hit... They said they would sleep in the house, fearing for the children and there was a massacre in the house. They are not safe in the schools nor the houses,” said Yasser Abu Hamada, a local resident.
Across Gaza, more than 40 Palestinians were killed yesterday in Israeli air strikes on Gaza City in the north, Al Bureij, Deir Al Balah and Al Nuseirat in central Gaza and in Rafah in the south, according to medics.
Meanhwile, Israeli forces killed a 13-year-old Palestinian boy near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The boy, named as Ghassan Gharib Zahran, was shot in the town of Deir Abu Mash’al in the occupied West Bank. The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that Israeli forces opened fire on a number of children, shooting and critically wounding Zahran. He was transferred to the Palestinian Medical Complex in Ramallah where he succumbed to his wounds shortly after.
Meanwhile, the ceasefire negotiations will resume in Doha today then return to Cairo tomorrow after talks yesterday between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said.
An Egyptian security delegation will head to Qatar’s capital today “on a mission to bring viewpoints closer between Hamas and Israel in order to reach a truce agreement as soon as possible”, Al Qahera News quoted a senior source as saying. “There is an agreement over many points,” the senior source said, adding the negotiations will be back in Cairo tomorrow.
Egypt and Qatar have been spearheading mediation in the nine-month-old war in hopes of ending the fighting and securing the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
“President Sisi affirmed the Egyptian position rejecting the continuation of military operations in the Gaza Strip,” the presidency said in a statement after his meeting with Burns in Cairo.
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