Israeli forces on Thursday attacked areas of the central and southern Gaza Strip where residents have been expecting a renewed ground offensive in areas crammed with tens of thousands of Palestinians already displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.
With nightfall on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike on a house in the southern city of Khan Younis killed eight Palestinians, health officials said.
Three Palestinians were killed and six injured in an Israeli missile strike on a house in Maghazi camp in central Gaza, the Palestine Red Crescent said.
Photo: AFP
“The task here is to dismantle Hamas — so that it no longer has military and governing capabilities,” Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said at a briefing on operations in Khan Younis. “We will be required to show a lot of perseverance and determination.”
A Palestinian journalist posted pictures of Israeli tanks near a mosque in a builtup area of Bureij in central Gaza.
Hamas released video it said showed its fighters targeting Israeli tanks and soldiers east of Bureij. Reuters was not able to verify the location or the date the video was filmed.
“That moment has come, I wished it would never happen, but it seems displacement is a must,” said Omar, 60, who said he had been forced to move with at least 35 family members.
He declined to give his surname for fear of reprisals.
Yamen Hamad has been living in a school in Deir al-Balah, also in central Gaza, since fleeing from the north. He said people newly displaced from Bureij and Nusseirat were setting up tents wherever there was open ground.
In one of Israel’s latest airstrikes, 20 Palestinians were killed and 55 wounded in Rafah, a major town near the southern border with Egypt, Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said.
Their bombed building was housing displaced civilians, local medics and residents said.
A Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli security forces, Palestinian authorities said, after stabbing two security personnel at a checkpoint near Jerusalem. Israeli police said the personnel were mildly injured.
Hamas praised the attack and in a statement said: “We call on our people in the West Bank and occupied territories to intensify operations and confrontations with the Zionist enemy.”
The conflict has also rippled across the Middle East, notably with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea to show their support for Hamas.
The US military on Thursday said that it shot down one drone and one anti-ship ballistic missile in the southern Red Sea that were fired by the Houthis in the 22nd attempted attack on international shipping since Oct. 19.
There was no damage to any of the 18 ships in the area, nor any reported injuries, US Central Command said on social media.
Palestinian health authorities earlier said that 210 people were confirmed killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, raising the toll of Palestinians killed in the war so far to 21,320 — nearly 1 percent of Gaza’s population. Thousands more dead were feared to be buried or lost in the ruins.
Over the course of the war, the Israeli military has expressed regret for civilian deaths, but it accuses Hamas of operating in densely populated areas and using civilians as human shields, a charge the group denies.
Meanwhile, Egypt confirmed that it had put forward a framework proposal to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas that includes three stages ending with a ceasefire and said it was awaiting responses to the plan.
The proposal is an attempt “to bring viewpoints between all concerned parties closer, in an effort to stop Palestinian bloodshed and the aggression against the Gaza Strip, and restore peace and stability to the region,” Egyptian State Information Service Chairman Diaa Rashwan said in a statement.
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