GAZA: Street battles raged in Gaza City with Hamas fighters using tunnels to ambush Israeli forces, as the United States said Palestinians must govern Gaza post-war, countering Israeli comments that it would control security indefinitely. Palestinian officials said 10,569 people had been killed as of Wednesday, 40% of them children. Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed, although the number is likely to be higher.
The Israeli military claimed its troops had advanced into the ‘heart of Gaza City’, Hamas’ main bastion and the biggest city in the seaside enclave, while the resistance group said its fighters had inflicted heavy losses on invading forces.
The armed wing of Hamas said it had killed a greater number of Israeli soldiers than the military has announced, and destroyed dozens of tanks, bulldozers, and other vehicles. It released footage of fighters firing anti-tank rockets and scoring direct hits to vehicles.
Israeli tanks have met heavy resistance from Hamas fighters using underground tunnels to stage ambushes, according to sources within Hamas and the separate Islamic Jihad resistance group.
Thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge at Al Shifa Hospital inside Gaza City despite Israel’s orders to evacuate the area it has encircled. They are sheltering in tents on the hospital grounds and say they have nowhere else to go.
The UN humanitarian office OCHA said the Israeli military had again told residents of the north to move southwards, opening a four-hour corridor for the fifth consecutive day.
Clashes and shelling around the main road continued, it said endangering evacuees. Corpses were lying alongside the road, while most evacuees were moving on foot as the Israeli military had told them to leave vehicles at the southern edge of Gaza city, it said.
Huge numbers of displaced people from among Gaza’s 2.3 million population are already crammed into schools, hospitals and other sites in the south.
Although the fighting is concentrated in the north, southern areas have also come under regular attack. In Khan Younis, Gaza’s main southern city, residents picked through the rubble and twisted debris of a building destroyed by an Israeli air strike, hoping to find survivors, on Thursday morning, witnesses said.
“As deaths and injuries in Gaza continue to rise due to intensified hostilities, intense overcrowding and disrupted health, water, and sanitation systems pose an added danger: the rapid spread of infectious diseases,” the World Health Organization said.
As the conflict and subsequent siege of Gaza enters its second month, Washington has begun discussing with Israeli and Arab leaders a future for the Gaza Strip without Hamas rule.
While a plan has yet to emerge, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined Washington’s expectations for the besieged coastal territory.
“No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza,” Blinken said on Wednesday at a press conference in Tokyo. –Agencies