Heavy Israeli bombardment in Gaza City forces medical facilities to close as thousands flee

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Heavy Israeli shelling rocked Gaza City on Tuesday as thousands of fleeing Palestinians sought shelter and medical facilities were forced to close. in the last offensive in the north of the territory.

Israel’s new ground attack on Gaza’s largest city is its latest effort to combat Hamas militants regrouping in areas the military had previously said had been largely cleared.

Much of Gaza City and surrounding urban areas have been razed or left a shattered landscape after nine months of fighting. Much of the population fled at the beginning of the war.but several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the north.

“The fighting has been intense,” said Hakeem Abdel-Bar, who fled the Tuffah district of Gaza City to relatives’ homes in another part of the city. He said Israeli fighter jets and drones were “hitting everything that moved” and that tanks had moved into central districts.

There was no immediate information on the victims. Families whose relatives were injured or trapped called for ambulances, but rescuers were unable to reach most of the affected districts due to Israeli operations, said Nebal Farsakh, spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent.

“It’s a dangerous area,” he said.

After Israel called for an evacuation on Monday From the eastern and central parts of Gaza City, staff at two hospitals, Al-Ahli and the Patients’ Friends Association Hospital, rushed to remove patients and closed them, the United Nations said. Farsakh said the three medical points run by the Red Crescent in Gaza City had closed.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had told hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza City that they did not need to evacuate. But Gaza hospitals have often closed and moved patients at any sign of possible Israeli military action, fearing raids.

Over the past nine months, Israeli troops have occupied at least eight hospitals, resulting in the deaths of patients and medical workers along with massive destruction of facilities and equipment. Israel has claimed that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, although it has provided only limited evidence.

Only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, and only partially, according to the UN humanitarian office.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza, triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7, has killed or injured more than 5% of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, and has expelled almost the entire population of their homes. Many have been displaced several times. Hundreds of thousands are crammed into sweltering tent camps.

Maha Mahfouz, a mother of two, said she fled twice in the past 24 hours. She first ran from her home in Gaza City to a relative’s home in another neighborhood. When that became dangerous, she fled Monday night to Shati, a decades-old refugee camp turned urban district.

He described extensive destruction in the eastern and central parts of the city. “The buildings were destroyed. The roads were destroyed. “Everything has turned into rubble,” he said.

Israeli airstrikes on the central city of Deir al-Balah and nearby refugee camps on Tuesday killed at least 14 people, including four children and a woman, according to officials at the Al Aqsa Martyrs and Al Awda, where the victims were treated. One of the attacks hit a police station at an open-air market in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing four people and wounding two dozen, half of them women and children. At one hospital, a toddler cried, coughed and wiped his eyes as doctors treated him on a crowded floor.

The Israeli military has said it had intelligence showing that militants from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were regrouping in central Gaza City. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians. In Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood that has seen weeks of fighting, the military said it had destroyed six kilometers (3 miles) of Hamas tunnels.

Hamas has warned that the latest incursions into Gaza City could lead to the collapse of negotiations over a ceasefire and the release of hostages.

Israel and Hamas seemed reduce differences in recent dayswith the mediation of the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

CIA Director William Burns met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on Tuesday in Cairo to discuss negotiations, el-Sissi’s office said. An Israeli delegation was heading to the Egyptian capital, Israeli media reported.

But obstacles remain, even after Hamas agreed to give in on its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any deal. Hamas still wants mediators to ensure that negotiations conclude with a permanent ceasefire, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks.

The current draft says mediators will “do everything possible” to ensure negotiations lead to an agreement to end the war. Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact. Hamas on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations.”

The Hamas cross-border raid on October 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took about 250 people hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, and about a third are said to be dead.

Israel’s bombings and offensives in Gaza have killed more than 38,200 people and injured more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

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Magdy reported from Cairo.

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