Battles rock Gaza City after mass evacuation order

AFP |  Gaza

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

Heavy combat and bombardment hit Gaza City and other parts of the Palestinian territory yesterday as mediators pushed on with efforts to halt the war raging into its tenth month.

Media linked to the territory’s rulers Hamas, whose October 7 attack sparked the bloodiest ever Gaza conflict, said that Israeli forces had launched more than 70 new air strikes.

Gaza’s health ministry reported 32 deaths, saying that the “martyrs, a majority of them children and women, were taken to hospitals overnight, because of continued massacres”.

Israel’s military said it was also fighting in the Rafah area, in the south, where its troops had “eliminated numerous terrorists in close-quarters combat and aerial strikes”.

A major focus of recent battles and mass displacement has been the biggest urban area, Gaza City, where two weeks of fighting devastated the eastern district of Shujaiya.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said dozens of bodies have been found under the rubble of what was now a “disaster zone”, with 85 percent of buildings uninhabitable.

Gaza City had been the focus of Israeli ground operations early in the war. ‘Trapped’ Israeli troops and tanks have, since Shujaiya, swept into other Gaza City districts to fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad, including in the vacated headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinians UNRWA.

The army dropped thousands of leaflets Wednesday urging all Gaza City residents to flee the “dangerous combat zone” -- an area where the United Nations said up to 350,000 people were staying.

One of the newly displaced, Umm Ihab Arafat, sat with her children on a sand pile amid the rubble as the incessant hum of Israeli drones filled the sky. “I have been displaced four times,” she said, pleading for a break for her and her children.

“They are entitled to rest, their eyes are full of horror and fear.” The International Committee of the Red Cross said that “entire families are trapped and desperately seek security.

The huge needs are beyond our capacity to respond”. The ICRC said Gaza City’s people had been instructed to move south “to areas that are overcrowded, lacking in essential services and are experiencing hostilities”.