Israeli forces are surrounding the town of Khan Younis, Israel’s high army commander has mentioned, as the bottom offensive spreads to the south of the Gaza Strip.
“Sixty days after the war began our forces are now encircling the Khan Younis area in the southern Gaza Strip,” mentioned Lieutenant Common Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of basic workers, on Tuesday.
“We have secured many Hamas strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip, and now we are operating against its strongholds in the south,” Halevi mentioned, in response to the Instances of Israel newspaper, as he introduced the subsequent part of Israel’s floor offensive in opposition to the Palestinian group.
“Anyone who thought that the IDF [Israeli army] would not know how to resume the fighting after the truce was mistaken,” he added of the pause in hostilities that collapsed on Friday, and that enabled the alternate of captives held in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli jails.
Hamas’s Osama Hamdan mentioned there can be “no negotiations or a [prisoner] swap” earlier than the Israeli assault involves an finish.
Chatting with reporters in Beirut, Hamdan additionally mentioned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “responsible” for the lives of Israeli captives in Gaza, including that his true goal is to “eliminate the Palestinian people”.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, mentioned it had engaged in combating in opposition to the Israeli military in all areas of the Strip since Tuesday morning.
A press release on the group’s Telegram channel claimed it completely or partially destroyed 24 military automobiles in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest metropolis. It added its snipers killed and wounded eight Israeli troopers.
Multiple million Palestinians have been displaced from northern Gaza since October 13, when the Israeli army ordered residents there to evacuate to the south on 24 hours’ discover.
After the weeklong truce expired, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of Palestinians from southern Gaza.
Households in Khan Younis had been packing up once more and heading additional south to Rafah, a city on the Egyptian border. Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah, mentioned the tight pocket of land was already full of individuals tenting out within the open and missing primary companies together with water and sanitation.
“Rafah is now the last shelter left for Palestinians, [but] the bombardment continues also in this area,” he mentioned.
Richard Peeperkorn, the World Well being Group (WHO) consultant for the occupied Palestinian territories, advised reporters through video hyperlink from Gaza that “the situation is getting worse by the hour”.
“There’s intensified bombing going on all around, including here in the southern areas, Khan Younis and even in Rafah,” Peeperkorn mentioned.
WHO has repeatedly warned that the unfold of illness might be even deadlier than air strikes. Whereas illness surveillance programs are hampered, the UN company has famous will increase in infectious ailments, together with acute respiratory infections, scabies and diarrhoea.
Thomas White, director of the United Nations Reduction and Works Company for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, mentioned the company was “not able to provide for more internally displaced people (IDPs)”.
“Rafah normally has a population of 280,000 and already hosting around 470,000 IDPs will not cope with a doubling of its IDP population,” White mentioned.
Adnan Abu Hasna, a UNRWA consultant, mentioned the company was anticipating a couple of million individuals to reach in Gaza’s southernmost metropolis within the coming days.
“We have tens of thousands of families in the streets. They are already [sheltering] under random things – pieces of nylon and wood. It’s raining now. We will see the disaster,” he mentioned, including about 50 to 70 assist vehicles coming into Gaza day by day through the Rafah border didn’t come near assembly the wants of these displaced.
On the forty fourth summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which commenced on Tuesday within the Qatari capital Doha, Qatar’s emir mentioned the deaths of harmless Palestinians in Gaza amounted to a “genocide committed by Israel”.
“It is a disgrace upon the international community to allow this heinous crime to continue … with systemic and purposeful killing of innocent unarmed civilians,” Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani mentioned in his opening remarks.
Native residents within the north of Gaza, the place a floor invasion started over a month in the past amid a relentless air offensive, additionally described harrowing circumstances. Munir al-Bursh, director-general of the Well being Ministry in Gaza, spoke to Al Jazeera from contained in the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which hosts 1000’s of refugees searching for security.
“The Israeli occupation forces have laid siege to the facility from all sides. Patients and those who took shelter here are gripped with fear and overwhelmed by horror,” he mentioned. “The Israeli forces are attacking with the aim of forcibly removing all those inside the hospital. These are patients, victims and displaced civilians.”
WHO recorded 203 assaults on healthcare amenities from October 7 to November 28, a quantity it described as “unprecedented.”
