by Nidal al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli strikes in and around Khan Younis killed at least 47 people in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinian medical sources said, and Israel again urged civilians to evacuate the area , a sign of the imminence of new operations against Hamas after the offensive led by the IDF in the north of the territory.
“We are asking the population to move. I know it is not easy for many of them, but we do not want to see civilians trapped in exchanges of fire,” said Friday on the American channel MSNBC Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The prospect of operations in the south of the territory overwhelmed by the influx in recent weeks of several hundred thousand inhabitants having fled the Israeli offensive on the north of the enclave and Gaza City has once again raised fears of many civilian victims. Khan Younes alone has 400,000 inhabitants, excluding displaced people.
“They told us, the inhabitants of Gaza, to go south. We went south. Now they are asking us to leave. But go where?” declared Atya Abou Djab, in front of a tent where he found refuge with his family near Khan Younes.
Israel has set itself the objective of eradicating Hamas from the Gaza Strip, which it had controlled since 2007, after the massacres perpetrated by the Palestinian Islamist group on October 7 around the enclave, in the south of the state. Hebrew. Israel estimates the number of victims at around 1,200 dead, the vast majority of them civilians. Hamas also captured some 240 hostages.
Massive Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip since that date have caused more than 12,000 deaths according to the Palestinian territory’s health authorities, figures deemed credible by the United Nations.
Around two thirds of the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been displaced by the fighting and United Nations agencies warn every day of a catastrophic humanitarian situation.
FIVE DEAD IN WEST BANK
On the night of Friday to Saturday, 26 Palestinians were killed and 23 others injured by an airstrike on two apartments in a multi-story building in Khan Yunis, according to Palestinian medical sources.
Eyad al-Zaïm told Reuters that he lost his aunt, his children and his grandchildren in the air raid, after all had fled the northern Gaza Strip. “This has nothing to do with the resistance (of Hamas),” he said in front of the morgue of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes where the 26 bodies were exposed before being taken by their relatives for burial.
A few kilometers further north, six Palestinians died in a raid on a house in Deir Al Balah, according to the same sources.
A third Israeli strike on Saturday afternoon cost the lives of 15 Palestinians in a house west of Khan Younes, witnesses and emergency services reported.
In a statement on Saturday, the Israeli army said it had struck dozens of targets linked to armed groups in the past 24 hours, without specifying their locations.
“We are determined to continue our operation wherever Hamas is present, including in the south of the Gaza Strip,” warned the chief spokesperson of the Israeli army on Friday, the counter- Admiral Daniel Hagari, despite calls from the international community for humanitarian pauses or a ceasefire.
Israel, however, agreed on Friday, at the request of its American ally, to allow a limited quantity of fuel into the enclave daily and to facilitate access to humanitarian aid convoys.
But the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said no aid could be delivered on Friday for the third consecutive day to the enclave due to lack of fuel and security guarantees.
The commissioner general of UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for aid to Palestinian refugees, said Saturday he had seen “horrific” images of victims of the bombing of a school managed by UNRWA in the north from the Gaza Strip. “These attacks cannot become routine, they must stop. A ceasefire cannot wait any longer,” declared Philippe Lazzarini on the X platform.
Israeli forces this week invaded the Al Chifa hospital complex, the largest in the Gaza Strip, in the north of the territory, and entered the compound which Israel believes houses a vast command post in its basement. of Hamas, which the Palestinian group denies.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al Kaila accused Israel of forcing the evacuation of 1,000 to 1,500 patients in Al Shifa, except for around 125 of them, as well as 34 premature babies. and doctors and nurses. The hospital no longer has fuel, food, medicine, water and the situation is catastrophic, she said at a press conference in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
The Israeli army denied the statements, saying it had acceded to a request from the hospital director to “expand and facilitate” evacuations via a “safe route”.
Staff at the facility announced the death of a premature baby on Friday.
Hamas, for its part, said an 85-year-old hostage died after a panic attack during an air raid.
“We have prepared for a long and sustained defense. The longer the occupying forces remain in Gaza, the heavier their losses will be,” Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Oubaida said in a video.
Violence continues at the same time in the occupied West Bank, where at least five Palestinians were killed overnight from Friday to Saturday in an Israeli strike on a building in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
In a statement, the Israeli army said it had struck “a number of terrorists (…) and prevented attacks against Israeli civilians”.
At least 186 Palestinians, including 51 children, have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 7, according to UN figures. Eight others were killed by Israeli settlers while four Israelis were killed by Palestinians, according to the same source.
(Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French service)
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