▲ The Shujaiya neighborhood after the Israeli army concluded its offensive in that area in eastern Gaza City.Afp Photo
AFP, AP, Europa Press and Prensa Latina
The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, July 11, 2024, p. 25
Gaza Strip. Israel yesterday ordered all residents to evacuate Gaza City, where its troops are maintaining a fierce offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas after more than nine months of war that has devastated the territory.
Thousands of leaflets dropped on Gaza City, in the north of the strip, calling on all persons present to leave the town, which remained a dangerous combat zone.
According to the United Nations (UN), the city was currently home to between 300,000 and 350,000 people.
In the second straight night of attacks in central Gaza, Israeli airstrikes hit four homes in the town of Deir al-Balah and the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp early on Monday, killing 20 people, including six children and three women, officials at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, where the victims were taken, said. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies.
The house hit in Deir al-Balah was in the safe humanitarian zone where Israel has told Palestinians to flee for refuge.
The overnight bombing came hours after Israeli warplanes attacked the entrance to a school housing displaced families on the outskirts of the southern city of Khan Yunis. The death toll from the attack rose to 31, including eight children, and more than 50 were wounded, officials at the nearby Nasser hospital said yesterday.
Images broadcast by Al Jazeera television showed children playing football in the school yard when a sudden bang shook the area, prompting cries of an attack, an attack!
The Israeli military said the bombing, condemned by Germany and France, near the school and reports of civilian casualties were being reviewed, and claimed its target was a Hamas militant who took part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, though it provided no evidence. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants fight in dense urban areas, yet rarely comments on the targets of its attacks, which often kill women and children.
Shujaiya, ghost town
The Israeli armed forces announced last night that The soldiers (…) completed their mission, which lasted about two weeks, in the Shujaiya area.and they assured that the offensive allowed them to destroy eight tunnels and eliminate dozens of terrorists.
Israel launched a ground operation on June 27 in the Shujaiya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, before extending its offensive to the center, where tens of thousands of people were called to evacuate the area, according to the UN.
Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said Shujaiya became a ghost town.
The new directives will only exacerbate the massive suffering of Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced several times.reacted Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
An Israeli government spokesman said the target was get civilians out of harm’s way while the troops were fighting.
The Israeli army indicated that Soldiers carried out an operation against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who were using the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) headquarters in Gaza City as a base to launch attacks.
No safe space
The latest fighting in Gaza has displaced 350,000 civilians, according to Philippe Lazzarini, head of the agency, who spoke before the new call for evacuation and said that There is no safe space in Palestinian territory.
Um Nimr Al Amal fled Gaza City with her family. It’s the twelfth time [que huimos]How many more times do we have to put up with it? A thousand times? Where are we going to end up? I have no energy left, I can’t take it anymore.he said.
Fighting was also raging in the south of the country, where Israeli tanks entered the centre of Rafah, according to witnesses who reported intense gunfire in the town on the border with Egypt, where the army has been carrying out a ground offensive since May 7.
The conflict erupted on October 7, when Islamist commandos killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 in southern Israel, according to an AFP count based on official data from Tel Aviv. The Israeli army estimates that 116 people remain captive in Gaza, 42 of whom are believed to have died.
In response, Israel promised annihilate Hamas and launched an offensive in Gaza that has already killed 38,295 people, most of them civilians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said his troops have Eliminated or wounded 60 percent of Hamas terrorists since the beginning of the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with White House Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk in Jerusalem, to whom he reiterated his commitment to a ceasefire agreement as long as Israel’s red lines are respectedNetanyahu has insisted that he will not end the war until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are released.
Families of the hostages have begun a march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to urge the government to reach a deal to free their loved ones. We call on all of Israel to join us in putting pressure on Netanyahu (…) that he must sign an agreement, bring them back and end this terrible war.Ayala Metzger, daughter-in-law of Yoram Metzger, who died in captivity at the age of 80 and whose body remains in Gaza, told AFP.
