GAUZE:
Israeli forces carried out new raids in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to address the US Congress.
The latest Israeli attacks destroyed homes in towns east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza and forced thousands of people to head west to seek shelter, residents said.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it received distress calls from residents who were trapped in their homes in Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis, but were unable to reach the town.
Doctors later said two Palestinians were killed in an airstrike in Bani Suhaila, where the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas said militants had detonated a bomb against an Israeli army.
The Israeli military, which is trying to eliminate Hamas after the October 7 attack on Israel, said it was operating in areas from which militants managed to launch rockets into Israel and attack Israeli troops.
Gaza health officials said Israeli military strikes over the past 24 hours had killed at least 55 people, the latest casualties in a war that health authorities in the enclave say has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians.
“Where shall we go? Cross to the sea?” Ganda, who has been displaced with her family six times during the war, said via a chat app from the town of Hamad in northwestern Khan Younis.
“We are exhausted, hungry and want the war to end now, now not an hour later.”
Residents said they had been ordered to head west to a designated humanitarian area, but that the area was no longer safe. The Israeli military issued the evacuation orders on social media, and some residents received orders to leave by phone.
Israeli forces also launched airstrikes in several areas of central and northern Gaza, including one in Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza, where health officials said they killed nine people.
In the southern Rafah region, the army said it was engaged in close combat with militants.
“During area sweeps, soldiers located a tunnel shaft, a large number of weapons and night vision equipment inside a children’s bedroom in a civilian building,” the military said.
One soldier was seriously wounded during the fighting on Wednesday, said the army, which has lost 326 soldiers in Gaza so far.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in its death reports, but local health officials say most of the Palestinians killed were civilians. Israel says at least a third are fighters.
PALESTINIANS CRITICIZE US
Hamas-led militants sparked the war on October 7 by invading southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing 250, according to Israeli accounts. About 120 hostages are still being held although Israel believes one in three is dead.
Some Palestinians who gathered at a hospital in Khan Younis before the funerals criticized the United States, Israel’s most important international ally, for welcoming Netanyahu.
He was scheduled to address Congress later Wednesday and meet with President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he will meet with Netanyahu in Florida on Friday.
“The United States is the main partner in what is happening in Gaza. We are being killed because of the United States. We are being slaughtered by American planes, American ships, American tanks and American troops,” said Kazem Abu Taha, a displaced resident from Rafah.
Netanyahu has said a deal to free Israelis from captivity in Gaza may be nearing, but Hamas officials say they see no change in Israel’s stance. An Israeli delegation will join ceasefire talks brokered by Washington, Cairo and Egypt next week, an Israeli official said on Wednesday.
Hamas wants a ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza. Netanyahu says the war cannot end until Hamas is eliminated.
The families of some of the hostages urged Netanyahu to do more for their captured relatives. “At this critical time, the Prime Minister’s trip to Washington, DC has no meaning unless it includes the words: ‘There is a deal,'” the Hostage Families Forum said.
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