Devendra Kumar
Israeli forces expanded their ground offensive into urban refugee camps in central Gaza, bombarding crowded Palestinian communities and ordering residents to evacuate. The escalation comes as Israel seeks to crush Hamas after its October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed around 1,200 people and took 240 hostage.
Residents described a night of shelling and air strikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi, and Bureij camps. The camps are packed with Palestinians who were driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war and their descendants. They are now also crowded with people who have fled from the north. “The bombing was very intense,” said Radwan Abu Sheitta, a Palestinian teacher. “It seems they are approaching,” he added of the Israeli troops.
A strike on Tuesday hit the home of a family in Mawasi, a rural area on Gaza’s southern coastline, which Israel has declared a safe zone for people to take shelter. One woman was killed, and at least eight other people were wounded, according to a cameraman working for the Associated Press at the nearby hospital.
The Israeli military issued an order for residents to evacuate a belt of territory the width of central Gaza, including Bureij, urging them to move to the nearby town of Deir al-Balah. The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military arm, said its fighters struck an Israeli tank east of Bureij. Its report could not be independently confirmed, but it suggested Israeli forces were moving towards the camp.
Warplanes and artillery also hammered areas east of Nuseirat camp. The Israeli military has vowed to crush Hamas and eliminate its military and governing capabilities in Gaza. The latest round of violence has brought international pressure for a ceasefire and US calls for a reduction in civilian casualties.
Despite the international demands, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the fight “isn’t close to finished.” More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. The latest update from the ministry on Tuesday reported 240 people killed over the past 24 hours.
The UN human rights office expressed concern over the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza, which has claimed over 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve. The office called on Israeli forces to take all measures available to protect civilians. In response, Israel said it would no longer grant automatic visas to UN employees and accused the UN of being “complicit partners” in Hamas’s tactics.
The war has also spread to other parts of the region, including Syria, where an Israeli air strike killed an Iranian general. The strike hit a neighborhood of the capital Damascus, killing General Seyed Razi Mousavi, an adviser to the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria. The strike was reportedly hit as the general was entering a farm reportedly used as an office of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Throughout the war, Iranian-backed militia groups around the region have stepped up attacks in support of Hamas. The strikes have disrupted trade and prompted a US-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping routes. Israeli troops have been engaged in nearly two months of ground combat with Hamas and other militants in northern Gaza and weeks of urban fighting in Khan Younis. The battles and bombardment have levelled large areas, and strikes have continued across the territory.
The Israeli military announced the deaths of two more soldiers on Tuesday, bringing the total killed in the ground offensive to 158. Militants launched a barrage of rockets into Israel late on Monday, triggering air raid sirens in the southern city of Ashkelon. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. Israel has vowed to continue fighting to eliminate Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza, after the militants carried out their shock attack into southern Israel on October 7.