Israeli army battles Hamas fighters in push towards Gaza City
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GAZA/JERUSALEM - Israeli tanks and troops pressed towards Gaza City on Thursday but met fierce resistance from Hamas militants.
The four-week war is closing in on the Gaza Strip’s main population centre in the north.
Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, which rules the enclave.
“We are at the gates of Gaza City,” Israeli military commander Itzik Cohen said.
Fighters of Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad were emerging from tunnels to fire at tanks, then disappearing back into the network, according to residents and videos from both groups, in guerilla-style operations against the Israeli army.
Aware of the difficulties of fighting in an urban environment, Israeli officers’ strategy appears for now to be concentrating large forces in the northern Gaza Strip, rather than launching a ground assault on the entire territory.
The latest war in the decades-old dispute began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct 7
Israel says gunmen killed some 1,400 people and took around 240 hostages.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza has killed around 9,000 people, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
Western nations have traditionally supported Israel’s right to self-defence.
However, harrowing images of bodies in rubble and hellish conditions inside Gaza have triggered appeals for restraint, and street protests around the world
‘Hamas has prepared well’
Residents reported mortar fire around Gaza City. They said Israeli tanks and bulldozers were sometimes driving over rubble and knocking down structures rather than using regular roads.
The south of Gaza was not spared either.
Three Palestinians were killed in tank shelling near the town of Khan Younis. An air strike killed five people outside a United Nations school in the Beach refugee camp, Gaza health officials said.
Brigadier-General Iddo Mizrahi, chief of Israel’s military engineers, told Army Radio that troops were in the first stage of opening access routes in Gaza.
But he said they were encountering mines and booby traps, noting that “Hamas has learnt and prepared itself well”.
Palestinians searching for casualties on Nov 1, after Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp.
PHOTO: REUTERS
After a total blockade of the Gaza Strip for more than three weeks
Palestinian border official Wael Abu Mehsen said 400 foreign citizens would leave for Egypt
Dozens of critically injured Palestinians would be crossing too, he said.
A diplomatic source said some 7,500 foreign passport holders would leave Gaza over about two weeks.
“I want to pass. We are not animals,” said Ms Ghada el-Saka, an Egyptian in Rafah waiting to return home after visiting relatives.
“We’ve seen death with our own eyes,” she added, describing a strike near her siblings’ house that had made her and her daughter live on the street.
Israel’s latest strikes have hit places including the heavily populated area of Jabalia
Gaza’s Hamas-run media office said on Thursday that at least 195 Palestinians were killed in the two Israeli attacks on Jabalia, with 120 missing under rubble. At least 777 people were wounded, it said in a statement.
Israel, which accuses Hamas of hiding behind civilians, said its strikes killed two Hamas military leaders in Jabalia.
“We are fighting on all fronts and hitting Hamas wherever it is found,” Israeli war Cabinet minister Benny Gantz said, warning of a long and complex fight. “We will hunt them down through night and day, in their cities and in their beds.”
With Arab nations increasingly vocal in their outrage at Israel’s actions, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern that Israel’s “disproportionate attacks... could amount to war crimes”
The Israeli military said it has lost 18 soldiers and killed dozens of militants since ground operations were expanded on Oct 27.
Violence has also spread to the occupied West Bank, with Israeli raids touching off confrontations with gunmen and people throwing stones.
Palestinian medics and the Health Ministry said three teenagers and a 25-year-old were killed there in clashes on Thursday. Israel’s army had no immediate comment.
Hospitals ‘beyond catastrophic’
Amid growing international calls for a “humanitarian pause” in hostilities, conditions in the Gaza Strip are increasingly desperate under Israel’s assault and tightened blockade.
Food, fuel, drinking water and medicine have run short. Sewage is leaking, some are drinking salt water, and the trickle of aid permitted in by Israel is a tiny proportion of what is needed.
Hospitals, including Gaza’s only cancer hospital, have struggled as shortages of fuel forced shutdowns.
“The situation is beyond catastrophic in the hospitals in Gaza,” said charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, describing packed corridors, dwindling fuel, refugees in the courtyard and many medics themselves having lost homes and loved ones.
Mr Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said the main power generator at the Indonesian Hospital was no longer functioning due to a lack of fuel. The hospital was switching to a back-up generator but would no longer be able to power mortuary refrigerators and oxygen generators.
“If we don’t get fuel in the next few days, we will inevitably reach a disaster,” he said.
The United Arab Emirates offered to treat 1,000 children accompanied by families, while Turkey offered to take cancer patients from Gaza’s Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, which went out of service after running out of fuel.
US diplomat departs for Israel, again
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was en route on Thursday for his second visit to Israel
He plans to meet Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday to voice solidarity, but also to reassert the need to minimise Palestinian civilian casualties, his spokesperson said.
Mr Blinken will also stop in Jordan, one of a handful of Arab states to have normalised relations with Israel.
On Wednesday, Jordan withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv until Israel ends its assault on Gaza. Israel said it regretted Jordan’s decision.
In Jordan, Mr Blinken will underscore the importance of protecting civilian lives and reiterate a US commitment to ensure Palestinians are not forcibly displaced from Gaza
He will pursue talks led by Egypt and Qatar on securing the release of all the hostages held by Hamas.
Also on Thursday, the US House of Representatives could pass with Republican support a Bill providing US$14.3 billion (S$19.5 billion) in aid for Israel.
But it is unlikely to become law, as it faces stiff opposition in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and the White House has threatened a veto.
President Joe Biden wants a US$106 billion Bill that would fund Ukraine, border security and humanitarian aid as well as money for Israel. REUTERS
