GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER/GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli tanks returned to parts of the northern Gaza Strip from which they withdrew last week, residents said on Tuesday, a return marked by the most violent fighting in this part of the enclave since the beginning of the year when Israel says it is reducing its operations.
Reuters journalists present on the Israeli side of the border noted that northern Gaza was shaken by very strong explosions after a relative two-week lull during which the Israeli army said it was carrying out more targeted operations.
Intense exchanges of automatic weapons resounded throughout the night and Hamas greeted the arrival of daylight with a new salvo of rockets towards Israel, proving its capacity to cause harm after more than 100 days of war.
The Israeli army claimed to have killed dozens of Hamas fighters overnight in Beit Lahiya, on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.
According to Gazan health authorities, Israeli bombings have caused the deaths of at least 158 civilians in the enclave over the past 24 hours.
The resumption of bombings in northern Gaza seems to show the limits of Israel’s commitment to change tactics to further preserve the civilian population, caught under pressure from Washington, while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said declared Monday evening that large-scale operations in the south of the enclave were also coming to an end.
IMPOSSIBLE RETURN FOR CIVILIANS
Fighting resumed as some of the hundreds of thousands of residents who have fled northern Gaza since the start of the war began returning to areas from which the Israeli army had withdrawn.
“We were thinking of returning home to Nazla, east of Djabalia (refugee camp), but thank God we didn’t. This morning, people living nearby arrived here and told us that the tanks had returned there,” said Abu Khaled, 43, a father of three, who is staying with relatives in largely destroyed Gaza City.
“The sound of bombing from planes and tanks did not stop all night. It is reminiscent of the first day of the (Israeli) ground offensive,” he added.
In southern Gaza, Israeli forces have fought their way into the center of Khan Yunis and are also present in towns to the north and east of Deir al Balah in the center of the enclave.
Yoav Gallant’s statement that the ground offensive is expected to end soon raises the question of whether the Israeli army will attempt to advance into areas it has so far not entered, including around Deir al Balah and Rafah, on the Egyptian border, where most of the 2.3 million Gazans are now crowded together in very precarious conditions.
(Nidal al-Mughrabi in Doha, Arafat Barbakh in Gaza and Tyrone Siu on the border between Israel and Gaza, French version Tangi Salaün, edited by Bertrand Boucey)
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