KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel struck targets in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, intensifying a renewed offensive that followed a week-long ceasefire with Hamas and raising new concerns about civilian casualties.
At least 200 Palestinians have been killed in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip since fighting resumed on Friday morning, according to the Health Ministry, despite the United States calling on ally Israel to do everything it can to protect civilians.
“This will be very important going forward,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday after meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Dubai, concluding his third trip to the Middle East since the start of the war. “That’s something we’ll be paying close attention to.”
Many of Israel’s attacks on Saturday focused on the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza, where the military said it attacked more than 50 Hamas targets with airstrikes, tank fire and its navy.
The military dropped leaflets a day earlier urging residents to leave, but as of late Friday there were no reports that large numbers of people had left the country, according to the United Nations.
“There is nowhere to go,” lamented Emad Hajar, who fled the northern town of Beit Lahia with his wife and three children a month ago to seek refuge in Khan Younis.
“They drove us out of the north, and now they’re pushing us to leave the south.”
The Israeli military said it also carried out strikes in the north, hitting more than 400 targets across the Gaza Strip.
About two million people – almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip – are crowded into the south of the territory, where Israel pushed people to relocate at the start of the war and has since vowed to expand its ground attacks. Since they cannot reach northern Gaza or neighboring Egypt, their only means of escape is to move within the 220 square kilometer area.
In response to U.S. calls to protect civilians, the Israeli military released an online map, but it has been more confusing than helpful.
It divides the Gaza Strip into hundreds of numbered, randomly drawn plots, sometimes across streets or blocks, and asks residents to know the number of their location in the event of an eventual evacuation.
“The publication does not specify where people will be evacuated,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories noted in its daily report. “It is unclear how Gazans would access the map without electricity and amid repeated telecommunications outages.”
In the first use of the map to order evacuations, Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesman, indicated areas in the north and south to be evacuated on Saturday in posts on X, formerly Twitter.
Adraee listed numbered zones under evacuation orders – but the highlighted areas on the maps accompanying his post did not match the numbered zones.
Egypt has expressed concerns that the renewed offensive could lead to Palestinians attempting to invade its territory. In a statement late Friday, Egypt’s foreign ministry said the forced relocation of Palestinians was “a red line.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, in Dubai on Saturday for the COP28 climate conference, is expected to make proposals with regional leaders to “center Palestinian voices” to plan the next steps for Gaza after the conflict, it’s called the White House. US President Joe Biden’s administration has stressed the need for an eventual two-state solution with the coexistence of Israel and a Palestinian state.
The renewed hostilities have also raised concerns about 136 hostages who the Israeli military says are still being held by Hamas and other militants, after 105 were released during the ceasefire. For the families of the remaining hostages, the collapse of the ceasefire was a blow to hopes that their loved ones could be next, after days of watching others being released. The Israeli army said Friday it had confirmed the deaths of four more hostages, bringing the known death toll to seven.
During the ceasefire, Israel freed 240 Palestinians from its prisons. Most of those released by both sides were women and children.
The war began after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other militants that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and captured about 240 people in southern Israel.
After the ceasefire ended, militants in Gaza resumed firing rockets at Israel, and fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah fighters operating along the northern border with Lebanon.
Stop humanitarian aid
Hundreds of thousands of people fled the northern Gaza Strip to Khan Younis and other parts of the south at the start of the war. This was part of an extraordinary mass exodus that has left three-quarters of the population displaced and facing widespread shortages of food, water and other supplies.
Since the resumption of hostilities, no aid convoys or fuel shipments have entered the Gaza Strip and humanitarian operations in Gaza have largely ceased, according to the United Nations
The International Rescue Committee, an aid group working in Gaza, warned that the return of fighting “will wipe out even the minimal assistance provided by the ceasefire and prove disastrous for Palestinian civilians.”
By the time the ceasefire began, more than 13,300 Palestinians had been killed in the Israeli attack, about two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which makes no distinction between civilians and combatants.
The death toll is likely much higher as officials have updated the figure only sporadically since November 11. The ministry says thousands more people are dying under the rubble.
Israel says it has targeted Hamas operatives, blaming the militants for civilian casualties and accusing them of operating in residential neighborhoods. According to Israel, 77 of its soldiers were killed in the ground offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip. It claims to have killed thousands of militants without providing evidence.
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Magdy reported from Cairo, Rising from Bangkok. Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this story.
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Complete AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war