An Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in southern
Gaza killed at least 25 Palestinians on Tuesday, as heavy bombardment in the
north forced the closure of medical facilities in Gaza City and sent thousands
fleeing in search of increasingly elusive refuge.
Israel’s new ground assault in Gaza's largest city is its
latest effort to battle Hamas militants regrouping in areas the army previously
said had been largely cleared.
Large parts of Gaza City and urban areas around it have been
flattened or left a shattered landscape after nine months of fighting. Much of
the population fled earlier in the war, but several hundred thousand
Palestinians remain in the north.
“The fighting has been intense,” said Hakeem Abdel-Bar, who
fled Gaza City’s Tuffah district to the home of relatives in another part of
the city. He said Israeli warplanes and drones were “striking anything moving”
and that tanks had moved into central districts.
The strike at the entrance to the school killed at least 25
people, according to an Associated Press reporter who counted the bodies at
Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Hospital spokesperson Weam Fares said the dead
included at least seven women and children and that the toll was likely to
rise.
Earlier airstrikes in central Gaza killed at least 14
people, including a woman and four children, according to two hospitals that
received the bodies. Israel has repeatedly struck what it says are militant
targets across Gaza since the start of the war nine months ago.
The military blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the
militants fight in dense, urban areas, but the army rarely comments on
individual strikes, which often kill women and children. The Israeli army said
the airstrike near the school and reports of civilian casualties were under
review, and claimed the strike targeted a Hamas militant who took part in the
Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
There was also no immediate word on casualties in Gaza City.
Families whose relatives were wounded or trapped were calling for ambulances,
but first responders could not reach most of the affected districts because of
the Israeli operations, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian
Red Crescent.
“It’s a dangerous zone,” she said.
After Israel on Monday called for an evacuation from eastern
and central parts of Gaza City, staff at two hospitals — Al-Ahli and the
Patients Friends Association Hospital — rushed to move patients and shut down,
the United Nations said. Farsakh said all three medical facilities run by the
Red Crescent in Gaza City had closed.
Scores of patients were transferred to the Indonesian
Hospital in northern Gaza, which itself was the scene of heavy fighting earlier
in the war. “We do not know where to go. There is no treatment and no
necessities for life," said Mohammad Abu Naser, who was being treated
there. “We are dying slowly.”
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it told hospitals and
other medical facilities in Gaza City they did not need to evacuate. But
hospitals in Gaza have often shut down and moved patients at any sign of
possible Israeli military action, fearing raids.
The Episcopal Church in the Middle East, which operates
Al-Ahli, said the hospital was “compelled to close by the Israeli army” after
the evacuation orders and a wave of nearby drone strikes on Sunday.
In the past nine months, Israeli troops have occupied at
least eight hospitals, causing the deaths of patients and medical workers along
with massive destruction to facilities and equipment. Israel has claimed Hamas
uses hospitals for military purposes, though it has provided only limited
evidence.
Only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, and those
only partially, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian office.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7
attack, has killed or wounded more than 5% of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians,
according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Nearly the entire population has
been driven from their homes. Many have been displaced multiple times. Hundreds
of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.
The U.N. humanitarian office said the exodus in Gaza City
was “dangerously chaotic,” with people instructed to flee through neighborhoods
where fighting was underway.
“People have been observed fleeing in multiple directions,
not knowing which way may be safest,” the agency said in a statement. It said
the largest U.N. bakery in the city was forced to close, and that the fighting
had blocked aid groups from accessing warehouses.
Maha Mahfouz, a mother of two, said she fled twice in the
past 24 hours. She first rushed from her home in Gaza City to a relative’s
house in another neighborhood. When that became dangerous, she fled Monday
night to Shati, a decades-old refugee camp that has grown into an urban
district where Israel has carried out repeated raids.
She described vast destruction in the areas targeted in the
latest raids. “The buildings were destroyed. The roads were destroyed. All has
become rubble,” she said.
The Israeli military has said it had intelligence showing
that militants from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were regrouping
in central Gaza City. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among
civilians. In Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood that has seen weeks of
fighting, the military said it had destroyed 6 kilometers (3 miles) of Hamas
tunnels.
Hamas has warned that the latest raids in Gaza City could
lead to the collapse of negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage-release deal.
Israel and Hamas had appeared to narrow the gaps in recent
days, with the U.S., Egypt and Qatar mediating.
CIA Director William Burns met Tuesday with Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo to discuss the negotiations,
el-Sissi’s office said. More talks were to be held Wednesday in Qatar, where
Hamas maintains a political office.
But obstacles remain, even after Hamas agreed to relent on
its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement.
Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations conclude with a
permanent cease-fire.
Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the
war with Hamas intact. Hamas on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations,"
including the operations in Gaza City.
Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in
southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The
militants took roughly 250 people hostage. About 120 are still in captivity,
with about a third said to be dead.
Israel's bombardment and offensives in Gaza have killed more
than 38,200 people and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory's
Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in
its count.
