JERUSALEM – Israel bombed Gaza on Jan 6 as the United Nations warned that the Palestinian territory has become “uninhabitable” after three months of fighting that threatens to engulf the wider region.

AFP correspondents reported Israeli strikes early on Jan 6 on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.

Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict, with the UN warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis as famine looms and disease spreads.

Mr Abu Mohammed, 60, who fled to Rafah from the central Bureij refugee camp, told AFP that Gaza’s future was “dark and gloomy and very difficult”.

With much of the territory already reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Jan 5 that “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable”.

The UN’s children’s agency warned that clashes, malnutrition and a lack of health services had created “a deadly cycle that threatens over 1.1 million children” in Gaza.

Israeli forces were continuing “to fight in all parts of the Gaza Strip, in the north, centre and south”, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late on Jan 5.

Mr Hagari said Israeli forces were maintaining a “very high state of readiness” near the border with Lebanon following the killing of a top Hamas commander in a strike in Beirut.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike, but a US defence official told AFP that Israel carried it out.

The war in Gaza was triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel launched by Hamas on Oct 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The militants took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel, including at least 24 believed to have been killed.

In response, Israel has launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that have killed at least 22,600 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Fighting rages

AFP correspondents reported on Jan 5 that Israeli strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, as well as parts of central Gaza.

A hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah reported that 35 people had been killed there.

The Israeli army said its forces had “struck over 100 targets” across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites and weapons depots.

The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory said it recorded 162 deaths over the same period.

A fighter jet bombed the central area of Bureij overnight, killing “an armed terrorist cell”, the army said, after what it described as an attempted attack on an Israeli tank.

And a number of Palestinian militants were killed in clashes in Khan Younis, a city that has become a major battleground, the army added.

Troops also uncovered tunnels under the Blue Beach Hotel in northern Gaza, which had been used “by terrorists as shelter from where they planned and executed attacks”, according to the army.

AFPTV footage on Jan 5 showed entire families, seeking safety from the violence, arriving in Rafah in overloaded cars and on foot, pushing handcarts stacked with possessions.

“We fled Jabalia camp to Maan (in Khan Younis) and now we are fleeing from Maan to Rafah,” said one woman who declined to give her name. “(We have) no water, no electricity and no food.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported renewed shelling and drone fire in the area around Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis after seven displaced people, including a five-day-old baby, were killed while sheltering in the compound.

“We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe due to the spread of epidemics, with the hospital overcrowded with displaced people,” said a spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, meanwhile, slammed a proposal by two Israeli ministers to resettle Gazans outside the territory.

“It’s not up to Israel to determine the future of Gaza, which is Palestinian land,” Ms Colonna told CNN on Jan 5.

Diplomatic push

Top Western diplomats were in the region on a fresh push to raise the flow of aid into the besieged territory and calm rising tensions.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Jan 6 was in Turkey, where he was due to discuss the Gaza war with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr Blinken will also visit several Arab states before heading to Israel and the occupied West Bank the following week.

During his visit, Mr Blinken plans to discuss with Israeli leaders “immediate measures to increase substantially humanitarian assistance to Gaza”, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Mr Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, travelled to Lebanon on Jan 5 for talks on “all aspects of the situation in and around Gaza”, including escalating tensions with Israel.

Germany’s top diplomat Annalena Baerbock was also due to travel to the region, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

She plans to discuss “the dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza” and tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border, spokesman Sebastian Fischer said.

The war in Gaza and almost daily exchanges of cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group since Oct 7 have raised fears of a wider conflagration.

Those fears grew this week following the killing of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri in Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel on Jan 5 that the group would swiftly respond “on the battlefield” to Mr Aruri’s death.

Israel’s military on Jan 5 said its fighter jets had conducted fresh strikes against Hezbollah targets just across the border. AFP