The Israeli army has intensified its attacks on Gaza City with air strikes on highly populated areas, while it is advancing with the initial stage of an operation to grasp the main urban center of the enclave which could force nearly a million Palestinians.
Among the victims of the Israeli assault on the city of Gaza on Thursday, six people, including four children, were killed in the southern district of Sabra, a source from the neighboring Al-Ahli hospital.
Images of the scene of one of the attacks east of Sheikh Radwan showed the bodies of the dead and injured seriously injured on the other side of the street in the middle of the flames and the wreck of the attack.
The victims of the city of Gaza were part of at least 48 Palestinians killed across the territory since dawn, hospital sources in Gaza told Tel Aviv Tribune, 16 of which asked for help.
Among the other victims, five Palestinians were killed by a strike of Israeli drones in the northwest of Khan Younis, and at least three killed by Israeli forces near a aid center north of Rafah, sources told Tel Aviv Tribune. In the north of the enclave, four people were killed and 10 injured in Israeli bombing of Jabalia al-Balad, emergency sources, five people, were killed in Tel Aviv Tribune, two children, were killed while waiting for help near the so-called Netzarim Axis, a source at the Al-Rawda hospital.
In Gaza City, where Israeli troops are displayed on the outskirts, thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee their homes in order to escape offensive pride, in the middle of heavy bombing of districts densely populated like Sabra and Tuffah.
“We are faced with a bitter and bitter situation, to die at home or to go elsewhere; as long as this war continues, survival is uncertain,” said Rabah Abu Elias, father of seven 67 -year -old children, at the Reuters press agency.
“In the news, they speak of a possible truce. On the ground, we only hear explosions and see death. To leave Gaza City or not, it is not an easy decision.”
Reporting Gaza City, Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli army repeated a strategy that he had used before in Gaza, “targeting the districts densely populated to depopulate”.
Israeli troops had already adopted the same approach in the districts of eastern Gaza City of Tuffah and Shujayea, he said, and now deployed tactics in the districts of Zeitoun and Sabra in the south-east of the city.
Nowhere
Reporting Deir El-Balah in the center of Gaza, the Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent, Tareq Abu Azzoum, said that for those who were fleeing the Israeli offensive of Gaza City, there were no security shelters in the enclave, because the places which had been allegedly tried safe by the Israeli army had been targeted several times.
“They feel that they were driven out without any safe where to go,” he said.
Abu Azzoum was nearby when a makeshift camp which shelters Palestinians from Deir El-Balah was struck Thursday in an Israeli bombardment, near the Al-Aqsa hospital in the city. Images he captured on the attack website showed chaotic scenes, while huge plumes of smoke rose from the attacked area.
“It is only 9 am … and the Israeli army already increases attacks in Gaza,” he said.
The Israeli army said it would call 60,000 reservists while continuing the operation to seize Gaza City, despite a general condemnation, domestic opposition and warnings that the offensive will deepen the humanitarian disaster and force hundreds of thousands of people to concentration areas in southern Gaza.
Nearly a million Palestinians are said to be in Gaza City, where Israeli tanks got closer to the city center this week.
“The intensification of hostilities in Gaza means more murder, more trips, more destruction and more panic,” Christian Cardon, chief spokesperson for the Red Cross Committee, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“Gaza is a closed space, from which no one can escape … and where access to health care, food and safe water decreases,” he said. “It’s intolerable.”
The head of the United Nations Rescue and Works Agency for Refugees in Palestine (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, told a briefing in Geneva that children’s malnutrition in Gaza City had increased by six times since March.
“We have an extremely low population who will face a new major military operation,” he said. “Many will simply not have the strength to undergo a new trip.”
The Gaza Ministry of Health said Thursday that there had been two additional deaths on the territory due to malnutrition in the last 24 hours, bearing the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition during the war at 271, including 112 children.
He said a total of 70 people had been killed and 356 injured by Israeli fires in the enclave during the same period, based on figures to the Gaza hospitals, while more victims have been trapped under rubble.
‘Beginning of ethnic cleaning’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advanced the Gaza City offensive despite renewed efforts to reach a ceasefire, including the last cease-fire proposal to which Hamas responded positively.
The decision to advance the operation shows that the Israeli government has “no intention of ending the war,” said Chronicler of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“There is no other way to explain it,” he said. “There is a Hamas offer on the table and Israel has not even discussed it yet.
“So, either they (Israel) want to exert more pressure on Hamas, what I am not sure is very likely, or they are really serious about reclaiming Gaza City, pushing all people to the south and then offering them to leave the Gaza Strip.
“This is the start of an ethnic cleaning of Gaza,” he said.
Rory Chalands of Tel Aviv Tribune said that the operation had been “requested” by Netanyahu despite the military opposition.
“His generals did not really want.
He said that there was a risk for Israel that the army fails “because the army is not ready for this, and that the reservists will not arise or that they will present themselves late, and it simply does not have the capacity to continue this operation”.
Israeli public opinion was also sworn against war, he said, noting: “We understand that a majority of Israelis now want war.”
