“It felt like the war was starting again,” says Mohammad Jamal (File)
Cairo:
Israel stormed a neighborhood of Gaza City on Thursday, ordering Palestinians to move south as tanks arrived and shelled the southern city of Rafah in what it said were the final stages of an operation against Hamas operatives. there.
Residents of Gaza City’s Shejaia neighborhood said they were caught off guard by the sound of approaching tanks and firing in the early afternoon, with drones also attacking following the night’s bombardment of the city, which Israel had searched at the start of the war.
“It felt like the war was starting again, a series of bombings that destroyed several houses in our area and shook the buildings,” Mohammad Jamal, a 25-year-old resident of Gaza City, told Reuters via a chat app.
Later on Thursday, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said Israeli military strikes have killed at least seven people in Shejaia so far. More victims are feared to be under the rubble, where rescue teams cannot reach, he said.
Images obtained by Reuters showed women, men and children carrying bags and food as they ran through the streets after the operation began. Some men carried injured children, some bleeding, in their arms as they fled.
“This is the (Israeli) occupation targeting us, as you can see. You can see the children, the children are being targeted here,” said a man carrying a bleeding boy in his arms.
An Israeli military spokesman said he had no comment on reports of casualties in Shejaia.
The armed wing of Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, said it had detonated a pre-planted explosive device on an Israeli tank east of the district.
Israel accuses the agents of hiding among civilians and says it warns displaced people to get out of the way of its operations against the fighters.
“For your safety, you must immediately evacuate south on Salah al-Din Street to the humanitarian zone,” army spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X in an appeal to residents and displaced people in Shejaia.
Residents and Hamas media said tanks beat the post and that people from the eastern suburbs ran west under fire as Israel blocked the road to the south.
More than eight months after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, triggered by the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7, humanitarian officials say the enclave remains at high risk of famine, with nearly half a million people facing food insecurity. “catastrophic”.
“We are starving in Gaza City and being hunted by tanks and planes, with no hope that this war will ever end,” Jamal said.
ANOTHER CHILD DIES FROM MALNUTRITION
The death of another girl at Kamal Adwan Hospital on Wednesday night brought the number of children who have died from malnutrition and dehydration to at least 31, a Gaza health official said, adding that the war had made it difficult to record such cases.
Israel denies accusations of having created famine conditions, blaming aid agencies for distribution problems and accusing Hamas of diverting aid, allegations that agents deny.
In southern Gaza, drone footage posted on social media, which Reuters was unable to immediately authenticate, showed dozens of destroyed homes in parts of Rafah, with the village of Swedeya on the western side of the city completely destroyed.
There was no immediate Israeli military comment on the military action.
International mediation supported by the US has failed to produce a ceasefire agreement, although talks continue in a context of intense Western pressure for Gaza to receive more aid.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that he had discussed his proposals for post-war Gaza governance, which would include local Palestinians, regional partners and the US, but that it would be “a long and complex process.” .
Senior US officials told Gallant, who was visiting Washington, that the US would maintain a pause on sending heavy munitions to Israel while the issue was under review. The shipment was halted in early May due to concerns that the weapons could cause more Palestinian deaths in Gaza.
Hamas says any deal must end the war and Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is eradicated.
When Hamas-led agents invaded southern Israel on October 7, they killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli records.
The retaliatory Israeli offensive has killed 37,765 people, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Thursday, and left the small, densely populated Gaza Strip in ruins.
Gaza’s Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, but authorities say the majority of those killed are civilians. Israel has lost 314 soldiers in Gaza and says at least a third of the Palestinians killed are fighters.
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