Israel-Hamas war
Hamas is increasingly relying on improvised bombs to inflict casualties and slow Israeli attacks
Israeli forces and Hamas are engaged in urban warfare across the Gaza Strip, with devastating consequences for civilians, while humanitarian aid collapses completely.
As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fights through heavily bomb-damaged urban areas in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is increasingly relying on improvised bombs to inflict casualties and slow the onslaught.
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have reported a flood of dead and injured civilians, many of them women and children, as medical supplies run out, while the expansion of ground fighting south has prevented any delivery of humanitarian aid much further than the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip said 1,207 Palestinians had been killed since a temporary ceasefire collapsed earlier this month, with 70% of the dead being women and children.
Israel is facing a difficult phase of the war with fighting in the north and south of the Gaza Strip
The focus of fighting over the past two days has been the Jabalia refugee camp and Shuja’iyya district in the north of the Gaza Strip, and Khan Younis and Bani Suheila in the south. The IDF has taken control of most of Salah al-Din Road, the main north-south highway that runs through the middle of the coastal strip.
On Wednesday morning, the IDF called on residents of Khan Younis to flee the city to safer areas and indicated that the bombardment of Rafah, just south of the Egyptian border, would be suspended until 2 p.m.
The United Nations and aid organizations say nowhere in the Gaza Strip is safe anymore. According to the United Nations, 1.87 million people, more than 80% of Gaza’s population, have left their homes. Many had to flee their shelters several times on the path of the Israeli advance.
The U.N. human rights office said Tuesday that “the pattern of attacks targeting or damaging civilian infrastructure raises serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law and significantly increases the risk of atrocities.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council said the Gaza war “now ranks as one of the worst attacks on the civilian population of our time.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the IDF was winning the war and that more than half of Hamas’s battalion commanders had been killed.
“The ground shook in Khan Younis and Jabalia. We have them both surrounded. “There is no place we cannot reach,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday. He said the IDF wins every battle, but at an “unbearable cost.”
The IDF reported seven casualties on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday morning. Since the ground operations began, 84 IDF soldiers have reportedly been killed in the ground operation, many of them by bombs and anti-tank missiles fired at close range.
“Palestinian militia fighters continued to use more sophisticated tactics to attack Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported, citing an incident on Tuesday in which Hamas’ military wing used explosives to attack a house to collapse Israeli soldiers’ tip in Khan Younis and detonated an armor-piercing shaped charge against an Israeli tank.
Hamas also fired 15 rockets from hideouts in the Gaza Strip into central and southern Israel on Tuesday.
The IDF said Khan Younis became Hamas’ main stronghold after the ground assault on the north began on October 27, with four of the extremist movement’s 24 battalions stationed there. Israeli commanders believe the Hamas hierarchy, including its leader Yahya Sinwar, may be hiding in the extensive network of tunnels beneath the city. Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp and Al Arabiya television reported on Wednesday that Israeli forces had surrounded the Sinwar family home.
The Biden administration has continued to call on Israel to do more to limit civilian casualties. Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s top aid official, said the IDF campaign in the south was as devastating to the Palestinian population as its operations in the north and that U.S. diplomacy had no influence on the outcome.
Officials from U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ office are in Israel for talks about what to do with Gaza after the war that began with a Hamas rampage through Israeli villages that killed 1,200 people, more than two-thirds of them civilians October 7th. Evidence is mounting of extreme sexual crimes committed by Hamas attackers against female victims.
Washington has insisted that there should be no long-term Israeli military presence in Gaza, but Netanyahu claimed there was no option for his country’s security other than direct military control.
“Gaza must be demilitarized. And in order for Gaza to be demilitarized, there is only one force that can ensure that demilitarization – and that force is the IDF,” the prime minister said in a written statement on Tuesday.
“No international force can be responsible for this. We have seen what has happened in other places where they have used international forces to achieve demilitarization. I am not prepared to turn a blind eye and accept another agreement.”
{{#Ticker}}
{{top left}}
{{bottom left}}
{{top right}}
{{bottom right}}
{{#goalExceededMarkerPercentage}}{{/goalExceededMarkerPercentage}}{{/ticker}}
{{Headline}}
{{#paragraphs}}
{{.}}
{{/paragraphs}}{{highlightedText}}
{{#choiceCards}}
One-time, monthly, yearly
Other
{{/choiceCards}}We will be in touch to remind you to contribute. Watch for a message in your inbox. If you have any questions about contributing, please contact us.