Israeli shelling hits refugee camps in Gaza

GAUZE:

Israel announced a more targeted approach to hunting down Hamas militants and their leaders as its airstrikes pounded the Gaza Strip, forcing some displaced families to flee to safety in donkey carts loaded with belongings and children .

Israel’s ground and air bombardment has devastated Gaza. The total recorded Palestinian death toll had reached 22,438 by Thursday – nearly 1 percent of its 2.3 million population, Gaza’s health ministry said.

Israeli shelling of Gaza on Thursday killed more than 20 Palestinians, including 16 in the town of Khan Younis in a southern coastal area crowded with people who had fled other areas of the enclave, Gaza health officials said.

Nine children were among the dead, they said. Separately, five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in the al-Nuseirat refugee camp, health officials told Reuters. Gazans said Israeli planes and tanks also bombed two other refugee camps, prompting many to head south.

People poured out of Al-Bureij, Al-Maghazi and Al-Nusseirat refugee camps on Thursday after the attacks, with some families riding donkey carts loaded with mattresses, luggage and children. The rain has turned the land into mud, adding to the misery of the displaced Palestinians.

By Thursday evening, residents of the central Gaza Strip said that Israeli planes and tanks intensified their shelling in the eastern directions of the Al-Maghazi and Al-Nusseirat camps.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday outlined a new stage in Israel’s war in Gaza: a more targeted approach to the north and a further pursuit of Hamas leaders in the south as Israel seeks to free the remaining hostages held by Hamas. The shift in strategy comes after months of brutal Israeli attacks on Gaza’s civilian population that have failed to inflict significant damage on the Hamas resistance movement.

Under international pressure to shift to less intense military operations and facing economic challenges, Israel has withdrawn its forces in Gaza to allow thousands of reservists to return to work.

Gallant said in a statement that operations in the north would include raids, tunneling, air and ground strikes and special forces operations.

After the war, Hamas will no longer control Gaza, Gallant claimed, adding that the enclave will be administered by Palestinian bodies as long as there is no threat to Israel.

Aiming to help prevent the conflict from expanding, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken He was scheduled to travel Thursday to the Middle East for a week of diplomacy, the State Department said.

bloodshed in Gaza

In the strike reported Thursday in Al-Mawasi on the western side of Khan Younis, Israeli shells landed near tents set up in the area by displaced people, health ministry officials said.

Footage in Palestinian media showed several bodies wrapped in blankets inside a hospital morgue in Khan Younis.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Everywhere you go, there are strikes. In the country, next to the camps, in Al-Mawasi. There is no safe place,” said Bahaa Abu Hatab, the brother of one of the dead.

In its daily briefing, the Israeli military claimed that Israeli warplanes killed three Hamas fighters who had tried to detonate explosives next to ground troops, and Israeli soldiers killed two others.

The army later claimed that soldiers had destroyed an underground military compound on the coast of the Gaza Strip with a cache of weapons, including mortars, grenades and RPGs.

Anxiety conflict can spread

Israel’s war against Hamas is nearing its three-month end amid international concerns that the conflict is expanding beyond Gaza, drawing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Hezbollah forces on the Lebanon-Israel border and shipping strips of the Red Sea.

Concern grew after a drone strike on Tuesday killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri in the Lebanese capital Beirut. He was buried in the Palestinian Shatila camp in the city on Thursday, amid crowds of mourners who fired shots.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed Wednesday that Hezbollah “cannot be silent” after the killing, but did not make specific threats to act against Israel in support of Hamas.

Hezbollah has engaged in near-daily shelling exchanges with Israel along Lebanon’s southern border since the start of the Gaza war. The attacks have severely degraded Israel’s border surveillance infrastructure and caused significant casualties among IDF troops.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied Aruri’s murder.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Friday that a 17-year-old boy was killed by Israeli forces and four others were wounded in Beit Rima in the West Bank.

Israel has claimed to have killed 8,000 militants in Gaza, however, there is video and photo evidence of fewer than 100 fighters being martyred.

Adding to the violence in the region, two explosions on Wednesday killed nearly 100 people during a memorial service for late Iranian general Qassem Soleimani at the cemetery in southeastern Iran where he is buried. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility.