Key Points
- Israel says its forces have pushed further into Gaza City.
- UN experts says Palestinian civilians were at “grave risk of genocide”.
- More people continued to cross from Gaza into Egypt through the Rafah crossing.
Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza City – the – in their assault on Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, but the militant group resisted their drive with hit-and-run attacks from
The city in the north of the Gaza Strip has for Israel, which has the Palestinian group’s command structure and has told civilians to flee to the south.
“We’re at the height of the battle. We’ve had impressive successes and have passed the outskirts of Gaza City. We are advancing,” Netanyahu said in a statement. He gave no further details.
Brigadier General Iddo Mizrahi, chief of Israel’s military engineers, said troops were in a first stage of opening access routes in Gaza but were encountering mines and booby traps.
“Hamas has learned and prepared itself well,” he said.
Smoke and flames rise following an Israeli strike on the Tal Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City Source: AAP / Mohammed Saber/EPA
Hamas and allied Islamic Jihad fighters were emerging from tunnels to fire at tanks, then disappearing back into the network, residents said and videos from both groups showed.
With international calls for a humanitarian pause in hostilities going unheeded, there was no letup in the suffering of Palestinian civilians, with UN experts saying they were at “grave risk of genocide”.
Palestinian civilians have suffered shortages of food, fuel, drinking water and medicine.
“Water is being used as a weapon of war,” said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.
Gazans say they’re getting sick
In Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, nine-year-old Rafif Abu Ziyada said she was and getting stomach pains and headaches.
“There is no cooking gas, there is no water, we don’t eat well. We are getting sick,” she said. “There’s garbage on the ground and the whole place is polluted.”
Over a third of Gaza’s 35 hospitals are not functioning, with many turned into impromptu refugee camps.
“The situation is beyond catastrophic,” said the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, describing packed corridors and many medics who were themselves bereaved and homeless.
“We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide,” seven UN special rapporteurs said in a statement in Geneva.
“We demand a humanitarian ceasefire to ensure that aid reaches those who need it the most.”
The latest war began Israel says they killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took in the deadliest day of its 75-year-old history.
Relatives mourn during the funeral of Israeli Staff Sergeant Shay Arvas at the Holon military cemetery, outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel. Source: AAP / Bernat Armangue/AP
Israel’s ensuing bombardment of the small Palestinian enclave of 2.3 million people has killed at least 9,061 people, including 3,760 children and 2,326 women, according to Gaza health authorities.
Israel says it has lost 18 soldiers and killed dozens of militants since ground operations were expanded on Friday.
More crossings over Egypt border
The Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt was opened for limited evacuations for a second day under a Qatari-brokered deal between Israel, Egypt, Hamas and the United States, aimed at letting some foreign passport holders and their dependents, and some wounded Gazans, out of the enclave.
Palestinian border official Wael Abu Mehsen said 400 foreign citizens would leave for Egypt via the Rafah crossing on Thursday, after some 320 on Wednesday.
Dozens of critically injured Palestinians were to cross too. Israel asked foreign countries to send hospital ships for them.
“I want to pass. We are not animals,” said Ghada el-Saka, an Egyptian at Rafah waiting to return home after visiting relatives. “We’ve seen death with our own eyes,” she added, describing a strike near her siblings’ house that had made her and her daughter live on the street.
Though Israel has told Gazans to go south, that part of the territory was not spared either. Three Palestinians died in tank shelling near the town of Khan Younis and an air strike killed five outside a UN school in Beach refugee camp, Gaza health officials said.
In central Gaza, an air strike destroyed clusters of houses in the Bureij refugee camp, residents and Gaza officials said, with 15 bodies pulled from the rubble.
“A massacre, a massacre,” people cried as they gathered corpses in blankets.
Israel was talking to medical agencies about setting up field hospitals in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, an Israeli official said on Thursday.
“Right now, we are talking about field hospitals that would provide the basic medical care required for war trauma,” Colonel Elad Goren of COGAT, an Israeli Defence Ministry agency that liaises with Palestinians on civilian affairs, said.
Israel’s latest strikes have included the heavily populated area of Jabalia, set up as a refugee camp in 1948.
Gaza’s Hamas-run media office said at least 195 Palestinians were killed in the two hits on Tuesday and Wednesday, with 120 missing and at least 777 people hurt.
Israel, which accuses Hamas of hiding behind civilians, said it killed two Hamas commanders in Jabalia.
The significant escalation is the latest boiling point in a long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas is a Palestinian military and political group, gaining power in the Gaza Strip since winning legislative elections there in 2006.
Hamas’s stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state, while refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
Hamas, in its entirety, is designated as a terrorist organisation by countries including Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.
Some countries list only its military wing as a terrorist group.
Other countries voted against a UN resolution condemning Hamas in its entirety, as a terrorist organisation.
