The Israeli army has widened its offensive in southern and central Gaza, with some of the worst fighting in the war, bombing houses sheltering displaced Palestinians, hitting refugee camps and evacuating thousands of people to no safe place. There are no survivors who already run for weeks.
Since Wednesday morning, “under heavy aerial bombardment, Israeli tanks have started pushing deeper and deeper into the center of Khan Younis city from the east,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported, reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza, forcing hundreds of people to flee. did People fled the area.
“Everyone thought that the eastern areas of Khan Yunis were the real target, as the leaflets dropped on residents said, but it seems that the entire city of Khan Yunis is currently under heavy bombardment,” Mahmood said. . Israeli forces ordered civilians to evacuate.
Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said Israel’s military was preparing for a day of heavy fighting in Khan Yunis, which he believed to be a key Hamas stronghold where many leaders could be stationed.
However, Israel’s military must tread carefully as it believes there could be many prisoners, Fischer said, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem.
“It’s all part of a plan to move operations further south,” he said. “We are likely to see.” [the Israeli military’s] The intensive operation lasted four or five weeks until mid-January.
The next few days could bring the biggest fighting of the two-month war, he added.
“After this point, there are no options for the Palestinians to go anywhere,” Mahmoud said. The only option that is possible or feasible is for the Palestinians to enter Egypt, but with the current situation, that seems very difficult”.
“Under heavy bombardment, people are being pushed into the central part first [of Gaza]then Khan Younis, and now Rafah,” he said, adding that “more than 1.5 million people have been squeezed into this pocket of land that is truly populated”.
According to Al Jazeera’s Hind Khadri, there were also numerous attacks on Deir al-Balah in the middle of the night in Gaza. He said, “Non-stop explosions, non-stop artillery shelling and non-stop clashes.” Many houses were bombed”.
“The number of injured in the hospital is huge. Doctors and paramedics could not save them all,” Khodri said, describing the severity of the attacks and noting that “It is very dangerous for people to go north or south. At the same time, the conditions here are very difficult. There is no food in the markets. Even the little food that was there earlier is no more when the center is separated from the south.
Six people were killed and 14 injured in an Israeli airstrike on Nasirat refugee camp in central Gaza. An Al Jazeera team at the scene of the strike reported on Wednesday that people were buried under the rubble of a building that had been hit.
As the wounded were rushed to the region’s few remaining active hospitals, aid organizations sounded the alarm that supplies were dangerously low.
The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, has warned that the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah is running out of capacity.
“Now there are 700 patients admitted to the hospital, new patients are coming in all the time,” said Marie-Uri Perriot Reville, MSF’s emergency coordinator. “We are running out of supplies to treat them.”
At least 16,248 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7. The official death toll in Israel is 1,200.
