RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — After more than three weeks of siege, the first Palestinians – dozens of dual passport holders and those seriously injured – were allowed to leave the Gaza Strip, where Israeli airstrikes bombed a refugee camp for a second day on Wednesday.
Despite bombing forcing tens of thousands from their homes and running out of food, water and fuel, no one was allowed to leave the embattled enclave except four hostages released by Hamas. Another prisoner was rescued by Israeli forces earlier this week. However, a limited agreement appeared to have been reached on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera television, one of the few media outlets still reporting from the northern Gaza Strip, broadcast footage of the devastation in the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City and the arrival of several injured people, including children, to a nearby hospital out of. The Hamas-led government said many people were killed and injured in the attacks, but the exact number was not yet known.
The Al Jazeera footage showed almost identical scenes to the day before: dozens of men digging through the gray rubble of demolished multi-story buildings in search of survivors.
The number of casualties from Tuesday’s strikes was also not known, although the director of a nearby hospital said hundreds were killed or injured. Israel said those attacks killed dozens of militants, including a senior Hamas commander who was involved in the militants’ bloody Oct. 7 rampage that sparked the war, and that the militants’ tunnels under buildings were destroyed .
The attacks came as Israeli ground forces advanced into the outskirts of Gaza City, days after beginning a new phase of the war that Israel’s leaders say will be protracted and difficult. As was the case at the weekend, when Israeli troops entered Gaza in large numbers for the first time, internet and telephone services were interrupted for several hours on Wednesday.
The isolated Palestinian enclave, home to 2.3 million people, is facing a severe humanitarian crisis amid a siege imposed by Israel following the Oct. 7 attack. Over half the population has fled their homes and supplies of food, medicine, water and fuel are running low. A nationwide power outage has left hospitals reliant on generators, which could soon be shut down as Israel has banned all fuel imports.
The attacks in Jabaliya underscore an expected rise in casualties on both sides as Israeli troops advance toward the outskirts of Gaza City and its dense residential neighborhoods. Israeli officials say Hamas’s military infrastructure, including hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels, is concentrated in the city, which was home to about 650,000 people before the war.
According to Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Border Crossing Authority, 110 foreign passport holders were allowed to leave the Gaza Strip as of Wednesday afternoon due to the deteriorating conditions.
The authority said the plan is for more than 400 foreign passport holders to be allowed to travel to Egypt. However, Egypt has said it will not accept an influx of Palestinian refugees because it fears Israel will not allow them to return to Gaza after the war.
Dozens of people could be seen entering the Rafah border crossing – the only one currently operating – and ambulances carrying wounded Palestinians left the border crossing on the Egyptian side.
Egypt had previously said more than 80 Palestinians – out of many thousands wounded in the war – were also being taken for treatment. But Dr. Mohamed Zaqout, a health ministry official in Gaza, told the Associated Press that 10 of the patients died before they could be evacuated to Egypt. The criteria for a medical evacuation were not immediately clear.
Those left behind are dealing with multiple crises, made worse by the communications blackout on Wednesday. Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel said internet and mobile services in Gaza were being gradually restored after a “complete disruption” that lasted several hours.
Internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org attributed both disruptions to “measures imposed by Israel.” Alp Toker, the group’s director, said: “Service remains well below pre-war levels.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross said such blackouts make it more difficult for civilians to seek safety. “Even the potentially life-saving act of calling an ambulance becomes impossible,” said Jessica Moussan, an ICRC spokeswoman.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health, meanwhile, said Gaza’s only hospital offering specialized treatment for cancer patients had to close due to a lack of fuel, leaving 70 cancer patients in a critical situation.
More than 8,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, mostly women and minors, and more than 22,000 people have been injured, the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday, without providing a breakdown by civilians and fighters. This figure is unprecedented in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in Hamas’ first attack, also an unprecedented number. Palestinian militants also kidnapped around 240 people in their raid and continued to fire rockets into Israel.
The Israeli military confirmed on Wednesday that nine soldiers were killed in fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the ground operation began to 11.
Israel has been vague about its operations in the Gaza Strip, but residents and spokesmen for militant groups say troops appear to be trying to take control of the two main north-south roads.
An estimated 800,000 Palestinians have fled Gaza City and other northern areas following Israel’s evacuation order, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north.
Israel has allowed international aid groups to send more than 200 trucks of food and medicine from Egypt to Egypt in the past 10 days, but aid workers say this is far from enough.
Israel has vowed to nullify or threaten Hamas’s ability to rule the Gaza Strip, but has also said it has no plans to reoccupy the area from which it withdrew soldiers and settlers in 2005. But it said little about who would rule Gaza afterward.
In testimony to Congress on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that “at some point it would make most sense for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to assume governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza.”
During a week of heavy fighting in 2007, Hamas drove the agency’s forces out of the Gaza Strip, leaving it with limited control over parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Since then, Palestinian support for President Mahmoud Abbas has plummeted, and many Palestinians view the Palestinian Authority as little more than Israel’s police force because it helps suppress Hamas and other militant groups.
The war now threatens to trigger further fighting on other fronts. There are daily exchanges of fire along the border between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah group, and Israel and the US have attacked targets in Syria linked to Iran, which controls Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups in the region supports.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said Israeli forces “intercepted a threat” overnight south of the southernmost city of Eilat that posed no danger to Israelis and did not enter Israeli airspace, without elaborating. A day earlier, the military said it shot down what appeared to be a drone near Eilat and intercepted a missile over the Red Sea. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed the attacks.
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This story has been updated to clarify that in addition to the four hostages released by Hamas, a fifth was rescued by Israeli forces.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Full AP coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.