UPDATED 1:11 P.M.
CAIRO/GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli forces pounded central Gaza by land, sea and air on Wednesday and Palestinian authorities reported dozens more deaths, with the U.N. health agency saying thousands of people were trying to flee the fighting.
Reflecting Israeli resolve to wipe out Hamas despite international calls for a ceasefire amid a humanitarian crisis, Israel’s military chief Herzi Halevi said on Tuesday the war would last many months. There were “no short cuts in dismantling a terrorist organisation”, he said.
Israel also signalled it could step up its response to cross-border attacks from northern neighbour Lebanon, where Hamas ally Hezbollah is based.
A Gaza health ministry statement said an Israeli air strike killed 20 Palestinians on Wednesday near the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
In central Gaza’s Al-Maghazi district, five Palestinians were killed in one air strike, medics said, while to the north in Gaza City health officials said the bodies of seven Palestinians killed overnight arrived at Al Shifa Hospital.
Residents in the central Gaza Strip said with nightfall, Israeli tank shelling intensified east of Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi refugee camps where tanks have been trying to force their way through.
Israel’s military on Wednesday reported three more soldiers killed in action in Gaza, bringing total military losses in the enclave since ground operations began on Oct. 20 to 166.
The war erupted after Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages in a cross-border rampage on Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with an assault that has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.
The Gaza health ministry said Israeli forces had killed 195 Palestinians and wounded 325 in the past 24 hours, bringing the recorded toll to 21,110 killed and 55,243 wounded in Israeli attacks in the coastal Palestinian territory since Oct. 7.
Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.
In Tel Aviv, a huge clock counted the time elapsed since Hamas took the hostages as families kept up their campaign for their loved ones to be freed.
LEBANON BORDER
At Israel’s northern frontier, security sources said Hezbollah had fired the most rockets and weaponised drones on Wednesday that it has in a single day since the series of daily clashes began.
The Israeli military said its warplanes had targeted Hezbollah military sites and other locations in Lebanon, and minister Benny Gantz said the situation must change.
“If the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the IDF will do it,” he told a press conference, referring to the Israel Defence Forces.
The IDF said it was working in several areas of Gaza, particularly around Al-Bureij and Khan Younis, which it described as a terror base for Hamas.
“We have expanded our activity and today we added another brigade and we are continuing to act there with the use of new military tactics above ground and underneath,” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said.
PEOPLE FLEEING
The U.N. World Health Organization said on Wednesday its staff had seen tens of thousands of people fleeing heavy strikes in Khan Younis and the Middle Area on foot, on donkeys or in cars. Makeshift shelters were being built along the road, it said.
“WHO is extremely concerned this fresh displacement of people will further strain health facilities in the south, which are already struggling to meet the population’s immense needs,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the West Bank and Gaza, said in the agency’s statement on X.
“This forced mass movement of people will also lead to more overcrowding, increased risk of infectious diseases and make it even harder to deliver humanitarian aid.”
Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which Hamas denies. Even Israel’s closest ally the U.S. has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate bombing”.
Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy also urged the United Nations to help clear the backlog of aid waiting to enter Gaza, describing the U.N. aid mechanism as “woefully unsuccessful”.
The Israeli military said it was continuing to strike militant targets in Gaza, at one point using its navy to hit suspects deemed to pose a threat to ground troops.
In the Shejaia district of Gaza City, an Israeli attack on militant fighters on foot caused secondary explosions, indicating the area was rigged with explosives to attack soldiers, a military statement said.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, six youths were killed in an Israeli raid into the city of Tulkarm, the Palestinian health ministry said. An Israeli military statement said Israeli forces on a counter-terrorism operation came under attack by militants who threw explosive devices at them. The attackers were struck by an Israeli air force aircraft, it said.
Residents said the youths were neither fighters nor militants.
“It was a sight I could not see,” Saida Famawi, the mother of one of the youths, said. “It was something you cannot look at.”
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Bassam Masoud in Gaza, and Emily Rose, Dan Williams and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing by William Maclean and Alison Williams; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Mark Heinrich and Nick Macfie)
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CAIRO/GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli forces pummelled central Gaza by land, sea and air on Wednesday and a telecommunications outage in much of the enclave hit efforts to reach Palestinian casualties, after Israel’s military chief said the war on Hamas would grind on for months.
Reflecting Israeli resolve to wipe out Hamas despite growing global calls for a ceasefire, Israel’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said the 11-week-old war would last “many months” and there were no “magic solutions” or “shortcuts”.
In central Gaza’s Al-Maghazi district, five Palestinians were killed in one air strike, medics said, while to the north in Gaza City health officials said the bodies of seven Palestinians killed overnight arrived at Al Shifa Hospital.
Residents also reported heavy fighting east and north of Al-Bureij district and in the nearby village of Juhr Ad-Deek, where they said Israeli tanks are stationed.
Israel’s military on Wednesday reported three more soldiers killed in action in Gaza, bringing total military losses in the enclave since ground operations began on Oct. 20 to 166. Nearly 21,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israeli intensified its raids this week, particularly in a central area just south of the waterway that bisects the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army told civilians to leave the area, though many said there was no safe place left to go.
The World Health Organisation released footage taken mostly on Monday and Tuesday at several Gaza hospitals, with WHO emergency medical team coordinator Sean Casey saying Gaza’s health capacity was 20 percent of what it was 80 days ago.
‘IT’S A BLOODBATH’
“There’s blood everywhere in these hospitals at the moment,” said Casey, adding that nowhere in Gaza was safe.
“We’re seeing almost only trauma cases come through the door and at a scale that’s quite difficult to believe, it’s a bloodbath as we said before, it’s carnage.”
The Israeli military said it was continuing to strike what it called terror targets in Gaza, at one point using its navy to hit suspects deemed to pose a threat to ground troops.
In the Shejaia district of Gaza City an Israeli attack on militant fighters on foot caused secondary explosions, indicating the area was rigged with explosives to attack soldiers, a military statement said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported a complete loss of communication with its teams working in the Gaza Strip due to the disruption of telecommunications and internet services.
It said in a statement that the VHF radio communication network, the sole means of communication during the blackout, sustained damage from artillery shelling that hit part of its headquarters in Khan Younis, posing a challenge for emergency medical teams trying to reach the wounded and injured.
“We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces, which has claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve,” U.N. Human Rights Office spokesperson Seif Magango said on Tuesday.
Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages on Oct. 7 in the deadliest day in Israeli history, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with an assault that has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.
As well as the reported 21,000 Palestinian dead, thousands more are feared to be buried under rubble. Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.
Gaza authorities buried 80 unidentified Palestinians on Tuesday whose bodies were handed over by Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the health ministry said.
According to the Islamic Waqf, or religious affairs ministry, the bodies were collected from the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which Hamas denies. But even Israel’s closest ally the United States has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate bombing”.
Six people were killed in the West Bank city of Tulkarm in an Israeli raid, the Palestinian health ministry said.
US-ISRAELI TALKS ON WAR ‘DAY AFTER’
In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed planning for what happens when the war ends, including governance and security in Gaza.
The two also discussed efforts to bring home the remaining hostages and a transition to a different phase of the war to focus on Hamas leaders when they met on Tuesday, a U.S. official said.
The United States has pressed Israel in recent weeks to scale down its war to a more targeted operation. But Washington is still seen in the region as a supporter of Israel and U.S. forces have been attacked by Iran-backed militants in the Middle East.
In an interview with Egyptian TV, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel intended to stay in Gaza after the war “but the whole world does not agree with it”.
He said the U.S. could “order” Israel to agree that Gaza become part of a future Palestinian state.
There are growing signs the conflict is spreading.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Tuesday on a container ship in the Red Sea and for an attempt to attack Israel with drones. The attacks are a response to Israel’s assault on Gaza, the militia says.
An Israeli airstrike killed a senior leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Syria on Monday.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Bassam Masoud in Gaza, and Emily Rose, Dan Williams and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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