Israel has intensified its destruction of Gaza City while it plans to seize the largest urban center in Gaza and to force around a million Palestinians to concentration areas in the south, because it killed at least 78 people on the other side of the besieged enclave since dawn, including 32 desperately looking for food.
Sunday, in Gaza City, the Palestinian civil defense reported a fire in tents near the Al-Qudes hospital after the Israeli bombing. At least five people were killed and three injured when a residential apartment was affected near the Remal district.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza government media office, said the Israeli army is also using “explosive robots” in residential areas and forcibly moved Palestinians from Gaza City.
In a press release on X on Sunday, Al-Thawabta said that the army has exploded more than 80 of these aircraft in civil districts in the past three weeks, calling it a “burnt earth policy” which has destroyed the houses and endangered lives.
He said that more than a million Palestinians in Gaza City and north of the enclave “refuse to submit to the policy of forced travel and ethnic cleaning” despite the destruction and famine caused by the Israeli assault.
Images published on Instagram by Palestinian journalist Faiz Osama and verified by Tel Aviv Tribune showed the moments that followed an Israeli air attack on the Sabra district, in the southern part of Gaza City.
In the images, while smoke plumes go up in the sky, a child can be seen screaming with a leg injury. A man also puts on the ground with what seems to be a head injury.
The video also shows the destruction left by the strike after the residential buildings were flattened by the explosion.
The Israeli forces have carried out a sustained bombardment in Gaza City since the beginning of August as part of a deepening thrust to grasp the area in the last phase of its genocidal war of almost two years.
On Friday, the Israeli army said that it had started the “initial stages” of its offensive, declaring the region a “combat zone”.
‘Darkness fields’
Gaza City report on Sunday, Hani Mahmoud of Tel Aviv Tribune said that the intensification of Israeli attacks has transformed parts of Gaza City, once teeming and congested with residential buildings, into “rubble fields”.
“There is a heavy non-stop artillery targeting the region of Zeitoun and Jabalia, where we see the systematic demolition of the houses. There is practically no fight in progress, but the heavy artillery and the bulldozers move from one street to another, destroying all these residential clusters,” he said.
“The majority of the inhabitants of these regions do not have the luxury of making your luggage and leaving because there is no safety anywhere.”
Another Palestinian journalist was also killed on Sunday. A source from the Al-Shifa hospital told Tel Aviv Tribune that Islam Abed had been killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza City and that it worked for the Al-Quds al-Youm television channel.
The government’s media office said that “the number of martyred journalists had increased to 247” since the start of the war. Other accounts have put the number of journalists and media workers killed at more than 270.
On Monday, five journalists – one of whom worked for Tel Aviv Tribune – were part of at least 21 people killed in an Israeli attack on Nasser Hospital in southern Khan Younis in the south of Gaza.
“Life is difficult, so we will stay with us”
Many residents of Gaza City choose to stay in place despite Israel declaring that it is a “combat zone”.
It was the most populous city in Gaza before the start of the war, which houses around 700,000 people. Then hundreds of thousands fled under the threats of forced evacuation of Israel before many come back, joined by thousands of other displaced from the South, during a ceasefire from January to March, which Israel broke out.
Fedaa Hamad, who was moved by Beit Hanoon, said that she “did not intend to leave” Gaza City this time despite Israel’s last warning.
“We are tired of the first trip. Where are we going to go? Is there a place in the south? We cannot find it, ”she said.
Akram Mzini, a resident from Gaza City, said he would not leave “because the trip is very difficult”.
“We were moved to the south before, and the trip to the south is not simple and it is expensive,” he said. “Life is difficult, so we will stay with us, and all that God wants, there will be.”
Elsewhere in Gaza on Sunday, an Israeli attack on the center of Deir El-Balah killed at least four people, Tel Aviv Tribune Arabic reported.
Earlier, medical sources said that an Israeli bombardment killed at least one person and had injured several in the city, located in the central part of the Gaza Strip.
According to medical sources, Israeli forces have killed at least 78 Palestinians in Gaza since dawn, including 32 aid seekers.
Since the start of the war, Israel has killed at least 63,459 people and injured 160,256. In total, 1,139 people were killed in Israel during October 7, 2023 led by Hamas, and around 200 have been taken in captivity.
On Sunday, the head of the Israeli army Eyal Zamir held an assessment meeting of the situation with his best commanders, saying that the military had to “launch” more attacks to surprise and achieve their goals anywhere.
Many other reserve soldiers will meet this week “in preparation for the continuous intensification of fighting against Hamas in the city of Gaza,” said Zamir, quoted by the army.
Meanwhile, the Hamas armed wing said that its fighters had managed to attack two invasive Israeli military vehicles in Gaza on Saturday.
The Qassam brigades said that an Israeli army Merkava reservoir had been struck by a Yassin-105 shell, while D9 military bulldozer was targeted with an explosive device in a street southwest of the Zeitoun district of the besieged area.
As global conviction is developing, in the greatest attempt to break the Israeli blockade in the Palestinian territory by sea, the World Sumoula left the Spanish port city of Barcelona on Sunday.
The launch of the flotilla comes from after the integrated classification of the integrated food security phase (IPC) said this month in Gaza this month.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, who describes himself as an independent group not linked to a government or a political party, has not said how many ships would have sails or the exact time of departure, but Swedish activist Greta Thunberg spoke of “dozens” of ships.
Sumud means “perseverance” in Arabic.
Two previous attempts at activists to provide Ship Aid in Gaza were blocked by Israel.
Mohamad Elmasry of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies told Tel Aviv Tribune that even if the flotilla was “an important act of symbolic resistance … In the end, they will be intercepted”.
“It will not resolve famine,” he said. “What will resolve famine, in the end, is the governments that do their job to stop the genocide and deliberate famine programs.”
