5/23/2024–|Last updated: 5/23/202405:15 AM (Mecca time)
The Israeli army continued to bomb areas in the central Gaza Strip while besieging UNRWA shelters in the northern Gaza Strip, while occupation tanks penetrated Rafah after fierce battles with the Palestinian resistance.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent reported that 16 Palestinians, including about 10 children, were martyred as a result of the occupation forces’ bombing of the Shabat family’s home in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in central Gaza City, resulting in the razing of the five-story house to the ground.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent also reported that 10 people, most of them children, were killed and others were injured in an Israeli bombing that targeted displaced people in a school and mosque teaching the Qur’an in the Al-Daraj neighborhood, also in central Gaza City.
The occupation forces burned the shelters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) on Hamdan Street in the Al-Faluga area in Jabalia Camp, northern Gaza Strip.
The army imposed a stifling siege on those centers for 11 days before the displaced people succeeded in leaving their centers amid heavy gunfire in search of a safe place.
Also in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces stormed the “Al-Awda” Hospital in Tal Al-Zaatar in the northern Gaza Strip after besieging it for the fourth day in a row, and forced the medical teams to leave it towards western Gaza after arresting one of its members.
It is noteworthy that a total of 148 people, including patients, companions and medical staff, were inside Al Awda Hospital when the siege began.
The invading forces also demanded that the patients’ companions leave the hospital. The fate of the patients is not known yet.
Anatolia Agency quoted eyewitnesses as saying that the Israeli army destroyed residential squares in the Imam Ali area on Al-Ajarma Street in Jabalia Camp, and burned homes in Tal Al-Zaatar, in addition to burning the Basat Market and Al-Daour Building in the middle of Jabalia Camp, which led to the death and injury of a number of Palestinians.
In the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, an Al-Jazeera correspondent reported that 10 Palestinians, including 4 children, were martyred and dozens injured as a result of the occupation forces bombing a gathering of citizens.
He added that the ambulance teams transported the bodies of the martyrs and a number of the wounded to the Al-Ahly Arab Hospital in Gaza amid difficult circumstances due to the complete collapse of the health system after the destruction of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in the city.
There were also martyrs and wounded in an Israeli bombing of a house north of the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.
He penetrated into Rafah
The White House considered the Israeli military operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip to be “more targeted and limited,” but renewed its warning to avoid “a lot of death and destruction.”
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that during his visit to Israel this week, he was informed of “improvements” to its plans for Rafah that would allow it to “achieve its military objectives while taking into account the harm to civilians.”
Sullivan added, in statements to reporters, “What we have seen so far regarding Israeli military operations in that region were more targeted and limited, and did not include major military operations in the heart of crowded urban areas.”
Reuters reported that Israeli tanks advanced to the outskirts of a crowded area in the heart of the city of Rafah yesterday, Wednesday, during a night that witnessed one of the heaviest waves of bombing on the city located in the southern Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression.
Reuters quoted residents and gunmen as saying that the tanks had taken new positions further west than before along the southern border fence with Egypt, and were now stationed on the edge of the Yabna neighborhood in central Rafah. Tanks have not yet penetrated the neighborhood due to the intensity of the fighting.
UNRWA, the main UN agency in Gaza, estimated that as of Monday more than 800,000 people had fled Rafah since Israel began targeting the city in early May despite international appeals.
For the eighth month in a row, Israel is waging a war on the Gaza Strip that has left more than 115,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of children and the elderly.
