DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel said Tuesday that its troops had entered the Gaza Strip’s second-largest city, as intensified bombardment sent streams of ambulances and cars carrying wounded and dead Palestinians, including children, to hospitals , which led to a new bloody phase of the war.
The military said its forces were “in the heart” of Khan Younis, which has emerged as the first target of the expanded ground offensive in the southern Gaza Strip that Israel says is aimed at destroying Hamas. Military officials said they were in the “most intense day” of fighting since the ground offensive began more than five weeks ago, with heavy firefights also taking place in northern Gaza.
The attack on the south threatens to trigger a new wave of displaced Palestinians and worsen the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. According to the United Nations, 1.87 million people – more than 80% of Gaza’s population – have been forced from their homes and fighting is now hampering the distribution of food, water and medicine outside a tiny part of the southern Gaza Strip. New military evacuation orders are pushing people into ever smaller areas in the south.
Bombing has become more intense across the territory, including in areas where Palestinians are being urged to seek safety. In the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, north of Khan Younis, a strike on Tuesday destroyed a house where dozens of displaced people were seeking refuge. At least 34 people were killed, including at least six children, according to an Associated Press reporter at the hospital who was counting the bodies.
Footage from the crime scene showed women screaming on the upper floor of a house that had been reduced to a concrete shell. In the rubble below, men pulled the limp body of a child from under a slab next to a burning car. At a nearby hospital, paramedics tried to revive a boy and a girl who were lying motionless and covered in blood on a stretcher.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Israel’s attack in retaliation for Hamas’ October 7 attack killed more than 15,890 people in Gaza – 70% of them women and children – and injured more than 42,000. The ministry does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths. It said hundreds have been killed or wounded since a week-long ceasefire ended on Friday and many are still trapped under rubble.
Israel says it needs to remove Hamas from power to prevent a repeat of the attack that sparked the war, when Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and captured about 240 men, women and children.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday the military must maintain indefinite security control over the Gaza Strip long after the war ends. His comments suggested a renewed direct Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, something the United States says it opposes.
Netanyahu said only the Israeli military could ensure Gaza remained demilitarized. “No international force can be held responsible,” he told a news conference. “I am not prepared to turn a blind eye and accept another agreement.”
Under pressure from the United States to prevent further mass casualties, Israel says it is becoming more precise in expanding its offensive and taking additional steps to force civilians out of its path to evacuate. Weeks of bombing and a ground offensive destroyed large parts of the northern Gaza Strip.
The military accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields when the militants operate in densely populated residential areas. But Israel has not provided details on the targets of individual attacks, some of which have leveled entire city blocks and complexes of dozens of multi-story residential towers.
The military’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, acknowledged that Israeli forces were using heavy force against civilian structures and said militants had stored weapons in homes and buildings so that plainclothes fighters could fire them at troops.
“To hit them requires a significant use of fire, both to target the enemy and of course to protect our forces,” he said. “That’s why the forces are powerful.”
BATTLES IN KHAN YOUNIS AND NORTH GAZA
Halevi said his troops had begun the “third phase of ground operations,” moving against Hamas in the south after capturing much of the north. Israel did not provide any specific information about troop movements.
Local residents said troops had advanced to Bani Suheila on the eastern edge of Khan Younis. Israeli forces also appear to be in the process of partially crossing the strip between Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. Satellite photos on Sunday showed around 150 Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles on the main road between the two cities.
The past few days have brought some of the heaviest bombardment of the entire war, the UN humanitarian affairs office OCHA said.
Witnesses said a strike hit a school in Khan Younis on Tuesday where hundreds of displaced people were seeking refuge. The number of injured was overwhelming at nearby Nasser Hospital, where wounded men and children lay on a bloody floor amid a tangle of IV tubes. In the morgue, a woman lay across the stretcher on which her dead husband and child lay among at least nine corpses.
“What is happening here is unimaginable,” said Hamza al-Bursh, who lives near the school. “They strike indiscriminately.”
In the northern Gaza Strip, his troops said they fought against Hamas fighters in the Jabaliya refugee camp and Shujaiya district, captured Hamas positions and destroyed rocket launchers and underground infrastructure.
The fighting in the north signaled Hamas’s tough resistance since Israeli forces invaded on October 27. The military says the Gaza offensive killed 86 of its soldiers and thousands of Hamas fighters, but has provided no evidence.
Even after weeks of bombing, Yehya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, whose whereabouts are unknown, managed to hold complex ceasefire negotiations last week and organize the release of more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. Palestinian militants have also continued firing rockets at Israel.
LESS PLACES
Following Israel’s complete evacuation of northern Gaza at the start of the war, most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are crammed into the 90-square-mile central and southern Gaza Strip.
Since its advance south, the Israeli military has displaced people from nearly two dozen neighborhoods in and around Khan Younis. This reduced the area where civilians can seek refuge by more than a quarter. It was not clear how many people responded to the evacuation call.
“Nowhere in Gaza is safe and there is nowhere left to go,” Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said Monday. “The conditions for providing assistance to the people of Gaza do not exist. If possible, there is a risk of an even more hellish scenario.”
Over the past two days, distribution of aid – mostly flour and water – has been possible only in the city of Rafah, far south on the border, the United Nations said. Places deeper in the Gaza Strip, including Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah and the northern Gaza Strip, could not be reached because of the fighting.
Dr. Nasser Bolbol, head of the neonatal intensive care unit at the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis, said acute hunger was spreading and some children were dying of dehydration and malnutrition after almost two months of limited aid entering the area under Israeli supervision, according to Seal .
“Gaza is completely covered in death and darkness,” he said.
Still hostage
Family members of hostages still held in Gaza held tense talks with Netanyahu and the War Cabinet on Tuesday. According to observers present, more than 100 people attended the nearly three-hour meeting. Some relatives shouted at the Cabinet members, realizing they had no immediate plans to rescue the 138 hostages still held. Almost half of the room left disappointed before the meeting ended.
During the meeting, five hostages released during the ceasefire shared harrowing details of their experiences. One spoke of Hamas militants “touching” female hostages, and another said militants shaved the body hair of a male hostage to humiliate him, according to a group representing the hostages’ families. Others said they were deprived of water.
The Associated Press was unable to verify reports that female and male hostages in Gaza experienced sexual abuse.
“It was not a relaxed discussion,” said Noam Peri, whose 80-year-old father is still held hostage. “After 60 days, people are tired and worried.”
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Magdy and Jeffery reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Lee Keath in Cairo and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.
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Complete AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.