DEIR AL-BALA, Gaza Strip (AP) — At least 25 Palestinians were killed Tuesday when Israeli forces bombed a school-turned-shelter in southern Gaza, while heavy bombardment in the north closed medical facilities in Gaza City and sent thousands fleeing for safety. Shelters are becoming harder to find.
Israel’s new ground attack The operation in Gaza’s largest city is the latest effort to combat Hamas fighters who are regrouping in areas the army said it had previously largely cleared.
Nine months of fighting have left much of Gaza City and its surrounding areas destroyed, leaving a desolate landscape. Many of the residents fled early in the war.But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the north.
“The fighting was intense,” said Hakim Abdel Bahr, who fled from Gaza City’s Tufa neighborhood to the home of relatives in another part of the city. He said Israeli warplanes and drones were “hitting everything that moved” and tanks had moved into central neighborhoods.
An Associated Press reporter counting the bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said at least 25 people were killed in the attack at the school entrance. Hospital spokesman Weem Fares said the dead included at least seven women and children and that the death toll could rise.
At least 14 people, including one woman and four children, were killed in the latest airstrike in central Gaza, according to two hospitals that received the bodies. Israel has repeatedly struck suspected militant targets across Gaza since the start of the war nine months ago.
The army blames Hamas for the civilian deaths because the group is fighting in densely populated urban areas, but it rarely comments on individual airstrikes, which often kill women and children. The Israeli army said it was investigating the airstrike near the school and the reports of civilian casualties, and maintained that the strikes targeted Hamas fighters who took part in the October 7 attack on Israel.
There were also no immediate announcements about casualties in Gaza City. Families of injured or trapped relatives have called for ambulances, but emergency workers have been unable to reach most of the affected areas because of Israeli military operations, said Neval Farsak, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent.
“It’s a danger zone,” she said.
After Israel called for evacuations on Monday The high number of deaths from eastern and central Gaza City prompted staff at two hospitals, Al-Ahli and Friends of Patients Hospital, to scramble to transfer patients and close the facilities, according to the U.N. All three Red Crescent-run medical facilities in Gaza City have been closed, Farsak said.
Many patients were transferred to an Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, which Scene of fierce battle “We didn’t know where to go. We had no medical treatment, no basic necessities,” said Mohammed Abu Nasser, who was being treated there. “We were slowly dying.”
The Israeli army said on Tuesday it had told hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza city that there was no need to evacuate, but hospitals in Gaza frequently close and move patients at the slightest sign of an Israeli attack for fear of being attacked.
The Anglican Communion for the Middle East, which runs Al Ahli hospital, said it had been “forced to close by the Israeli military.” Evacuation orders and a wave of drone attacks in my neighborhood on sunday.
Over the past nine months, Israeli forces have seized at least eight hospitals, causing the deaths of patients and medical staff and extensive destruction of facilities and equipment. Israel claims that Hamas is using the hospitals for military purposes but has provided limited evidence.
According to the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, and even those are only partially functional.
Israel’s military action in Gaza, which began with a Hamas attack on October 7, has killed or injured more than 5 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, according to the Strip’s Health Ministry, forcing almost the entire population to flee their homes, many of whom have been forced to flee multiple times. Packed into a muggy tent camp.
The UN humanitarian office said evacuations in Gaza City were “dangerously chaotic” and people were being told to flee through areas where fighting was taking place.
“People have been seen fleeing in different directions, not knowing which is safest,” the agency said in a statement, adding that the city’s largest UN bakery had been forced to close and fighting had prevented aid groups from accessing its warehouse.
Maha Mahfouz, a mother of two, said she had fled twice in the past 24 hours. She first rushed to flee her home in Gaza City to a relative’s house in another neighborhood. When it became unsafe there, she fled on Monday night to Shatti, a refugee camp established decades ago that has now grown into a city and is subject to repeated Israeli raids.
She described extensive destruction in areas targeted in recent attacks. “Buildings have been destroyed. Roads have been destroyed. Everything is reduced to rubble,” she said.
The Israeli military said it had received intelligence indicating that fighters from Hamas and smaller Islamic Jihad groups were regrouping in central Gaza City. Israel accuses Hamas and other fighters of hiding among civilians. In the Shijaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, where fighting has been ongoing for weeks, the army said it had destroyed six kilometers (three miles) of Hamas tunnels.
Hamas is Recent attacks on Gaza City could lead to breakdown in negotiations They call for a ceasefire and an agreement to release the hostages.
Israel and Hamas Closing the recent gapThe United States, Egypt and Qatar are acting as mediators.
CIA Director William Burns met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss the negotiations, el-Sisi’s office said. Further talks are scheduled to take place on Wednesday in Qatar, where Hamas has a political base.
But obstacles remain after Hamas agreed to concede its key demand that Israel commit to ending the fighting as part of any agreement. Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that the talks end with a permanent ceasefire.
Israel rejects any agreement that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact, and on Monday Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “creating further obstacles to negotiations,” including the operation in Gaza City.
Israeli officials say a Hamas cross-border raid on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians. The militants took about 250 hostages. About 120 are still being held, and about a third are said to have died.
According to the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health, Israeli bombings and attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed more than 38,200 people and injured over 88,000, figures that do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
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Magdy reported from Cairo.
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