- At least 25 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday when Israel struck a converted school shelter in southern Gaza.
- As heavy bombing continued in northern Gaza, medical facilities in Gaza City closed and thousands of people fled.
- Israel’s new ground offensive against the Gaza Strip’s largest city is aimed at repelling Hamas militants who are regrouping in previously cleared areas.
At least 25 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday when Israel struck a converted school shelter in southern Gaza. Intensive bombing from the north has forced Gaza City’s medical facilities to close and thousands of people to seek shelter, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to find shelter.
Israel’s new ground offensive on Gaza’s largest city is the latest in a campaign against Hamas militants who have regrouped in areas the military says have been largely cleared.
Much of Gaza City and its surrounding urban areas have been leveled or shattered after nine months of fighting. Most of the population fled in the early days of the war, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the north.
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“The fighting was intense,” said Hakim Abdel-Barr, who fled from Gaza City’s Tufa district to a relative’s home in another area. He said Israeli warplanes and drones were “hitting everything that moved” and tanks were moving into the central area.
Palestinians mourn their loved ones killed in Israeli bombing of Gaza, at the morgue of a hospital in Deir al-Balah, July 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Karim Hanna)
At least 25 people were killed in the strike at the school entrance, according to an Associated Press reporter who counted bodies at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Hospital spokesman Wiam Fares said at least seven women and children were among the dead and the death toll was likely to rise.
At least 14 people, including a woman and four children, were killed in the previous airstrikes in central Gaza, according to two hospitals that recovered the bodies. Israel has repeatedly struck sites across Gaza that it says are targets of militants since the war began nine months ago.
The military blames Hamas for civilian deaths because it fights in densely populated urban areas, but it rarely comments on individual attacks that often kill women and children. The Israeli military said it was reviewing reports of airstrikes and civilian casualties near schools, and said the strikes targeted Hamas militants involved in attacks on Israel on October 7.
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There was no immediate news of casualties in Gaza City. Families with wounded or trapped relatives called for ambulances, but Israeli operations had prevented rescue workers from reaching much of the affected area, said Nebal Farsak, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent.
“It’s a dangerous area,” she said.
After Israel ordered the evacuation of eastern and central Gaza City on Monday, staff at two hospitals, Al-Ahli and the Patients’ Friends Association hospital, rushed to evacuate patients and closed their doors, the UN said. All three Red Crescent-run medical facilities in Gaza City were closed, Farsak said.
Many patients were transferred to an Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, which was the scene of fierce fighting early in the war. “We don’t know where to go. There is no treatment, no basic necessities,” said Mohammad Abu Nasser, who was being treated there. “We are dying slowly.”
The Israeli military said Tuesday that there was no need to evacuate hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza City. But hospitals in Gaza often close and transfer patients when there are signs of Israeli military action, for fear of airstrikes.
The Anglican Church in the Middle East that runs Al Ahli said it was “forced to close the hospital by the Israeli military” following Sunday’s evacuation order and a series of drone strikes nearby.
Over the past nine months, Israeli forces have captured at least eight hospitals, resulting in the deaths of patients and medical staff and extensive destruction of facilities and equipment. Israel claims Hamas uses the hospitals for military purposes, but has provided limited evidence.
According to the UN humanitarian office, only 13 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are operational, and even those are only partially operational.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza began with Hamas’s October 7 offensive, and according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 5 percent of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or wounded. Nearly the entire population has been forced from their homes. Many have been relocated multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are crammed into sweltering tent camps.
The UN humanitarian office said the exodus from Gaza City had been “dangerously chaotic”, with people being told to seek refuge in neighbourhoods where fighting was ongoing.
“People were seen running in different directions, not knowing which way was safest,” the agency said in a statement. The city’s largest U.N. bakery was forced to close, and aid groups were unable to access the warehouse because of the fighting, it said.
Maha Mahfouz, a mother of two, said she had fled twice in the past 24 hours. She first ran from her home in Gaza City to a relative in another neighborhood. When it became too dangerous, she fled Monday night to Shati, a decades-old refugee camp that has grown into an urban area that Israel has repeatedly bombed.
She described the massive destruction in areas targeted by recent airstrikes. “Buildings were destroyed. Roads were destroyed. Everything was reduced to rubble,” she said.
The Israeli military said it had received intelligence that Hamas and smaller Islamic Jihadist groups were regrouping in central Gaza City. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians. In Shijayya, a Gaza City neighborhood where fighting has been ongoing for weeks, the military said it had destroyed three miles of Hamas tunnels.
Hamas has warned that recent airstrikes in Gaza City could derail ceasefire and hostage talks.
Recently, Israel and Hamas appeared to have resolved their conflict through mediation by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar.
CIA Director William Burns met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss negotiations, the president’s office said. More talks are scheduled for Wednesday in Qatar, where Hamas has a political office.
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But even after Hamas agreed to concede on a key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement, obstacles remain. Hamas still wants mediators to ensure that the talks end in a permanent ceasefire.
Israel has rejected any deal that would force Hamas to end the war intact. Hamas on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “placing more obstacles in negotiations,” including the operation in Gaza City.
According to Israeli authorities, Hamas’s cross-border airstrikes on October 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians. The militants took about 250 hostages. About 120 are still being held captive, and about a third are reported to have died.
According to the Gaza Strip Health Ministry, more than 38,200 people have been killed and more than 88,000 wounded by Israeli bombing and offensives. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its tally.
