RAFAH:
Israel sent tanks into eastern Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip early Sunday after a night of heavy aerial and ground shelling, killing 19 people and wounding dozens more, health officials said.
Jabalia is the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps and is home to more than 100,000 people, most of whom were descendants of Palestinians expelled from towns and villages in present-day Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to the creation of the state of Israel.
Late Saturday, the Israeli military said forces operating in Jabalia were preventing Hamas, which controls Gaza, from reestablishing its military capabilities there.
Read: Israel strikes east Rafah as ceasefire talks end without deal
“We detected in the past weeks attempts by Hamas to restore its military capabilities in Jabalia. We are working there to eliminate those attempts,” said Vice Admiral Daniel Haggari, an Israeli military spokesman, during a briefing with reporters.
Haggari also said that Israeli forces operating in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City killed about 30 Palestinian militants.
“The shelling from the air and the ground has not stopped since yesterday, they were shelling everywhere, including near schools that host people who lost their homes,” said Saed, 45, a resident of Jabalia.
“The war is starting again, so it seems in Jabalia,” he told Reuters via a chat app. “New invasion forces many families to evacuate.”
The army sent tanks back to Al-Zeitoun, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, as well as Al-Sabra, where residents also reported heavy shelling that destroyed many houses, including high-rise residential buildings.
The military had claimed to have gained control of most of these areas months ago.
Read: Israel orders people in more of Gaza’s Rafah to evacuate
Shootings on the outskirts of Deir Al-Balah
The tanks did not enter the eastern city of Deir al-Balah, residents and Hamas media reported, but some Israeli tanks and bulldozers penetrated the fence on the city’s outskirts, clashing with Hamas fighters.
In an airstrike late Saturday in Deir Al-Balah, two doctors, a father and his son, were killed, health officials said.
The armed wing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in several areas inside Gaza with anti-tank rockets and mortar shells, including Rafah, previously the last refuge of Palestinians where more than a million were taking refuge. people.
The war was sparked by a Hamas-led offensive in southern Israel on October 7, in which about 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli estimates.
Israel’s military operation in Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The bombing has devastated the coastal enclave and caused a deep humanitarian crisis.
On Sunday, more families, estimated to be in the thousands, were fleeing Rafah as Israeli military pressure intensified. Tank gunfire rained across the city as the army issued new evacuation orders covering some neighborhoods in the city center, which borders Egypt.
“As I was leaving Rafa, I passed Khan Younis, I cried, I didn’t know if I was crying for what I was going through, for the humiliation and the sense of loss I felt or for what I saw.” said Tamer Al-Burai, a resident from Gaza who had taken refuge in Rafah.
“I saw a ghost town, all the buildings on both sides of the street, whole neighborhoods gone. People fleeing for safety, knowing there was no safe place and no tents and no people to take care of them.” he told Reuters.
Burai, a Palestinian businessman, said the Palestinians had been abandoned by the world and left to fend for themselves as the war entered its eighth month, with world powers failing to end hostilities and international mediation efforts to broker a ceasefire. are collapsing because of the differences between Hamas and Israel.
“No ceasefire, no UN resolution, no hope,” he said.
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