GAZA: Israeli tanks on Friday mounted a new push into southern Gaza’s main city, which is sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven there by Israeli bombardment, once more approaching the enclave’s biggest functioning hospital.
People inside Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, forced to house displaced Gazans as well as patients, reported hearing shellfire from tanks advancing into the west of the city, while residents also reported fierce gun battles to the south.
The Gaza health ministry said 142 Palestinians had been killed and 278 injured in the previous 24 hours.
The Israeli bombardment and ground invasion launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on towns and villages around Gaza have largely emptied the northern two-thirds of the 46 km-long (29-mile) coastal strip.
Around 85% of the 2.3 million population have been driven to seek shelter in the south, according to the U.N. – the area that is now the focus of Israel’s campaign to eradicate the Hamas movement that governs Gaza.
People’s ability to monitor the latest threats, report attacks or check on relatives – along with the functioning of rescue services – has been severely curtailed by a near-total blackout on telecommunications that was now in its eighth day, the longest outage since the start of the war.
Twelve people were killed in Israeli strikes on a residential building near the largely non-functioning Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said.
Israeli forces have made limited withdrawals from northern Gaza this month, saying operations there were largely complete.
But Palestinians in the southern Gaza City suburb of Tel Al-Hawa said Israeli tanks pushed back into the neighbourhood, forcing people taking shelter in some schools there to evacuate and head south.
The Islamic Jihad militant group said it had fought with Israeli forces in the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza and in Khan Younis, while Hamas’s armed wing said its fighters had clashed with Israeli forces in several areas across Gaza overnight and on Friday morning.
