The Israeli army intensified its deployment in the south of Gaza on Tuesday, raising fears of an “even more hellish scenario” for civilians.
The Israeli army has expanded its ground operations to the entire Gaza Strip, with tanks deployed near Khan Younes, the new epicenter of tensions.
Dozens of Israeli tanks, troop transports and bulldozers have entered the south of the Palestinian territory, where some civilians are crowded.
At the start of its ground operation, the Israeli army asked the population of northern Gaza to migrate towardsThe south of the territory, which has become even more densely populated with the influx of hundreds of thousands of these displaced people.
International organizations are alarmed at the risks for civilians, where “all telecommunications services”are at a standstilldue “a cut of the main fiber networks on the Israeli side”according to the Palestinian telecoms group Paltel
“An even more hellish scenario is about to come true, to which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond”declared the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories, Canadian Lynn Hastings, whose visa Israel announced last week would not renew.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, who arrived in the Gaza Strip on Monday, denounced the suffering “intolerable” Population
“What shocked me the most wasThese are the children who have terrible injuries and who have also lost their parents and have no one to take care of them”she added, stressing that civilians “have nowhere to go”.
According to the UN, 1.8 million peopleor about three-quarters of the total population of Gaza, have already been displaced by war.
“We saw what happened in the north of Gaza. This cannot serve as a model for the south,” added from Cairo, Ahmed Al-Mandhari, regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Empty WHO warehouses?
The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, indicated on Monday that he had received a notice from the Israeli army in order to “withdraw our supplies from our medical warehouse in the southern Gaza Strip within 24 hours, as ground operations will render it unusable.”
But the Israeli Defense body overseeing civilian activities in the Palestinian Territories (Cogat) denied having asked the WHO to evacuate its warehouse in southern Gaza.
The Israeli army, however, asked international humanitarian organizations for their “support” to “help with the establishment of infrastructure” in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area in the south of the Gaza Strip between Khan Younes and Rafah, where Israel is asking civilians to withdraw.
On Monday, the soldiers said they were acting “forcefully” in Khan Younes, where they dropped leaflets on certain neighborhoods warning that“a terrible attack is imminent” and ordering the inhabitants to leave.
Dozens of Israeli tanks, troop transports and bulldozers entered the south of the Palestinian territory near Khan Younes, where some civilians are crowded, witnesses told AFP.
Amine Abou Hola, 59, said that these vehicles had entered “to a depth of two kilometers” in the village of al-Qarara, north of Khan Younes.
In a devastated neighborhood of Rafah, a town bordering Egypt where the Israeli military said it was seeking to destroy Hamas underground tunnels, survivors were searching through the rubble on Monday.
“We were at home, we heard a huge noise and things started falling on us, it was like an earthquake. We had never seen that before, the earth shook and the sound was so strong”testified a survivor, Abou Jahar al-Hajj.
Two civilians killed for every Hamas fighter
The Hamas Health Ministry said Monday that 15,899 people, 70% of them women and children and adolescents, have been killed since Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip began on October 7.
ADVERTISEMENTAbout two civilians were killed for every Hamas fighter killed in the Gaza Strip, senior Israeli military officials said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It is to be hoped that this ratio will be much lower in the next phase of the war”, one of its officials said, adding that high-tech mapping software had been deployed to try to reduce the number of non-combatant deaths.
In Israel, the attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians, according to the authorities.
In retaliation, Israel declared war on Hamas and promised to destroy the Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip. The army announced Tuesday morning the death of three of its soldiers the day before to bring the death toll to 78 since the start of the ground offensive.
According to the army, 137 hostages still held in Gaza105 having been released during a recent week-long truce, including 80 in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
ADVERTISEMENTEfforts to extend the truce failed in part because Hamas did not want female hostages to reveal what they had suffered, according to a US official, accusations rejected by the Islamist movement.
Spread of the conflict in the West Bank and Lebanon
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip are also spreading to the occupied West Bank, the Israel-Lebanon border and various locations in the Middle East, where American troops are targeted.
In the West Bank, five Palestinians were killed on Monday by the Israeli army according to the Palestinian Authority. And early Tuesday, soldiers were deployed in the Jenin sector, a local stronghold of Palestinian factions.
The Israeli air force said it had bombed positions of Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, and various localities in Lebanese territory early Tuesday. “reprisals” to shots from Lebanon towards northern Israel.
ADVERTISEMENT
