Israel bombards southern Gaza as humanitarian crisis reaches ‘breaking point’

GAZA – Israeli air strikes and artillery bombarded Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip on Dec 2, hitting mosques and homes and close to a hospital, after the collapse of a truce in the nearly two-month-old war between Israel and Hamas militants.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed and 650 wounded since the truce ended on Dec 1 morning – adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinian dead since the start of the war.

The head of the International Red Cross said the renewed fighting was intense.

“It’s a new layer of destruction coming on top of massive, unparalleled destruction of critical infrastructure, of civilian houses and neighbourhoods,” Mr Robert Mardini told Reuters in Dubai.

With conditions inside the Hamas-ruled enclave reaching “breaking point”, in Mr Mardini’s words, the first aid trucks since the end of the truce entered Gaza through the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing on Dec 2, Egyptian security and Red Crescent sources told Reuters.

The warring sides blamed each other for the collapse of the seven-day truce, during which Hamas had released hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

The southern part of Gaza was taking a pounding on Dec 2. Residents said houses and open areas had been hit, and three mosques destroyed in Khan Younis. Columns of smoke rose into the sky.

In Deir Al-Balah city in the central Gaza Strip, nine Palestinians, including children, were killed in an air strike, health officials said.

Displaced Gazans have been sheltering there because of fighting in the north of the densely populated enclave, but residents said they feared Israel was preparing for ground troops to move on the south.

“This is the same tactic they used before entering Gaza and the north,” said Mr Yamen, who gave only his first name.

Mr Yamen fled to Deir Al-Balah from the north after Israel destroyed several districts there.

“Where to after Deir Al-Balah, after Khan Younis? I don’t know where I would take my wife and six children,” he said.

On Dec 2 morning, Israeli war planes attacked areas close to the Khan Younis Nasser Hospital six times, according to medics and witnesses.

The hospital is filled with thousands of displaced and hundreds of wounded, including many of those who had been evacuated from north Gaza hospitals.

“A night of horror,” said Ms Samira, a mother of four. “It was one of the worst nights we spent in Khan Younis in the past six weeks since we arrived here,” she said. “We are too afraid they will enter Khan Younis.”

The Israeli military said that in the last 24 hours, combined attacks by its ground, air and naval forces had hit 400 militant targets and killed an unspecified number of Hamas fighters.

The conflict broke out on Oct 7 when

Hamas militants crossed into southern Israel

and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in a rampage against kibbutzim and other communities. More than 200 hostages were taken to Gaza.

Israel responded with a ferocious bombing campaign and a ground offensive that have destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced hundreds of thousands of people in what has become the bloodiest episode of the wider Israel-Palestine conflict.

Told to flee

Leaflets dropped by Israel on eastern areas of Khan Younis ordered residents of four towns to evacuate – not to other areas in Khan Younis as in the past, but farther south to Rafah.

Residents took to the road with belongings heaped up in carts, searching for shelter farther west.

In Rafah, residents carried several small children, streaked with blood and covered in dust, out of a house that had been struck. Mr Mohammed Abu-Elneen, whose father owns the house, said it was sheltering people displaced from elsewhere.

Islamic Jihad’s armed wing Al-Quds Brigades said its fighters had fired mortar bombs against Israeli forces massed in Kissufim in the southern Gaza Strip east of Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah.

The Israeli military said it had killed many squads of fighters in northern Gaza, including in a gun battle at a mosque used by Islamic Jihad militants as a command post.

In southern Israel, rocket sirens sounded early on Dec 2 in communities near the border with Gaza, but there were no reports of serious damage or casualties.

Reuters could not confirm the battlefield accounts.

Trading blame

A truce that started on Nov 24 had been extended twice. But after seven days, during which women, children and foreign hostages were freed as well as a number of Palestinian prisoners, mediators failed to find a formula to release more.

Qatar, which has played a central role as mediator, said negotiations were still going on with Israelis and Palestinians to restore the truce, but Israel’s renewed bombardment of Gaza had complicated matters.

An Israeli official in Washington said it was a “very high priority” to get as many hostages released as possible.

“Israel is willing to give additional pauses,” the official said. “We can negotiate while we still fight.”

Meanwhile, US Vice-President Kamala Harris laid out broad American objectives for when the Israel-Hamas conflict ends, and stressed that the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank should ultimately be reunified under one governing entity.

In talks with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, Ms Harris said that “under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza”, the White House said in a statement.

She also said that once the war ends, efforts to rebuild should be pursued “in the context of a clear political horizon for the Palestinian people towards a state of their own led by a revitalised Palestinian Authority and have significant support from the international community and the countries of the region”, the statement said.

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ mainstream Fatah party and has ruled the enclave ever since.

However, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Istanbul that the chance for peace in Gaza after the pause was lost for now due to what he called Israel’s uncompromising approach.

In a dangerous sign that the war is spreading to other fronts, Israel shelled Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon for a second day. Hezbollah said one of its fighters was killed. REUTERS