Thousands of civilians flee north Gaza as Israeli troops and Hamas fighters battle

GAZA/JERUSALEM/ROME: Thousands of Palestinian civilians trudged in a forlorn procession out of the north of Gaza on Wednesday seeking refuge from Israeli air strikes and fierce ground fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters.

The exodus took place in a four-hour window of opportunity announced by Israel, which has told residents to evacuate the north encircled by its armoured forces or risk being trapped in the violence.

But the central and southern parts of the small, besieged Palestinian enclave also came under fire again as the war between Hamas and Israel entered its second month.

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli air strike that hit houses in the Nusseirat refugee camp killed 18 people on Wednesday morning. In Khan Younis, six people, including a young girl, were killed in another air strike.

“We were sitting in peace when all of a sudden an F16 air strike landed on a house and blew it up, the entire block, three houses next to each other,” said a witness, Mohammed Abu Daqa.

“Civilians, all of them civilians. An old woman, an old man and there are others still missing under the rubble.”

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Gaza City is now surrounded by Israeli forces. The military said troops have advanced to the heart of the densely-populated city while Hamas says its fighters have inflicted heavy losses.

Chief Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said combat engineers were using explosive devices to destroy a Hamas tunnel network that stretches for hundreds of kilometres (miles) beneath Gaza.

In a statement on Wednesday, the military said it had destroyed 130 tunnel shafts so far. “Combat engineers fighting in Gaza are destroying the enemy’s weapons and are locating, exposing and detonating tunnel shafts,” it said.

Israeli air strikes had also killed a Hamas weapons maker, Mahsein Abu Zina, and several fighters, the Israeli military said.

Israeli tanks have met heavy resistance from Hamas fighters using the tunnels to stage ambushes, according to sources with Hamas and the separate Islamic Jihad group. Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed.

UN officials and G7 nations stepped up appeals for a humanitarian pause in the hostilities to help alleviate the suffering of civilians in Gaza, where buildings have been flattened and basic supplies are running out.

Palestinian officials said 10,569 people have now been killed, 40% of them children. The level of death and suffering is “hard to fathom”, UN health agency spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said in Geneva.

UN complicit in ‘forced displacement’ of Gazans: Hamas

Hamas on Wednesday accused the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees of “colluding” with Israel in the “forced displacement” of residents of Gaza.

“UNRWA and its officials bear responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe, in particular the residents of the Gaza (City) area and north of it” who are following instructions to flee, said Salama Maruf, head of the media bureau of Gaza rulers Hamas.

The invading Israeli military has told Palestinians in the north to move south as it battles Hamas in Gaza City.

An UNRWA spokeswoman did not immediately respond when contacted by AFP about the Hamas accusation.

The UN previously said 1.5 million of the 2.4 million people living in the densely populated coastal territory have been displaced by the war.

Italy to send hospital ship close to Gaza coast

Italy will send a hospital ship close to the coast of Gaza to help treat victims of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said.

The ship is leaving on Wednesday from the western Italian port of Civitavecchia with 170 staff, including 30 people trained for medical emergencies, the minister said, adding that Italy was also working to send a field hospital to Gaza.

Crosetto suggested that two Italian naval vessels already sent to the region were likely to remain in place.

“We will evaluate whether to keep them in the area but I prefer to keep three ships there and not to have any regrets,” Crosetto told reporters.

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Israel struck at Gaza in response to a cross-border Hamas raid on southern Israel on October 7 in which gunmen killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The war has descended into the bloodiest episode in the generations-long Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Fleeing the bombs

Thousands of Palestinians fleeing from the north wearily made their way in a long line past wrecked and bomb-scarred buildings, witnesses said.

The Israeli military had told them they should move south of the Wadi Gaza wetlands along the main Salah al-Din Road. 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.

Thousands of others remain inside the encircled north, including at Gaza City’s main Al Shifa hospital, where Um Haitham Hejela was sheltering with her young children in an improvised tent.

“The situation is getting worse day after day,” she said. “There is no food, no water. When my son goes to pick up water, he queues for three or four hours in the line. They struck bakeries, we don’t have bread.”

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Israel’s stated intention is to wipe out Hamas, pounding Gaza from air, land and sea while ground troops have moved in to cleave the narrow coastal strip in two in fierce urban fighting amid the ruins of buildings.

Palestinian media reported clashes between Hamas and Israeli forces near al-Shati (Beach) refugee camp in Gaza City. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters had destroyed an Israeli tank in Gaza City.

Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield claims of either side.

There was no further word from Israel on the possible fate of Yahya Sinwar, the most senior Hamas leader in Gaza and believed to be a key planner of the October 7 attacks. Israel said on Tuesday he had been cornered in his bunker.

Fears for hostages

Israelis have voiced fear that military operations could further endanger the hostages taken on October 7 and believed to be held in the tunnels. Israel says it will not agree to a ceasefire until the hostages are released. Hamas says it will not stop fighting while Gaza is under attack.

Washington has backed Israel’s position that a ceasefire would help Hamas. But US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he had urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pause fighting for humanitarian reasons.

Israel has so far been vague about its long-term plans if it achieves its stated objective of vanquishing Hamas.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters in Washington late on Tuesday that Israel has no intention of reoccupying the Gaza Strip or controlling it for “a long time”.

“We assess that our current operations are effective and successful, and we’ll continue to push,” the official said. “It’s not unlimited or forever.”

‘No food, no water’

The United Nations says Gaza’s health system is close to collapse, battered by air strikes, flooded with patients, and running out of medicines and fuel.

G7 foreign ministers, meeting in Tokyo, called for a humanitarian pause in the fighting.

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A G7 statement said Israel had the right to defend itself but civilians must be protected and international humanitarian law followed. A two-state solution “remains the only path to a just, lasting, and secure peace,” it said.

Such a solution, envisaging the creation of an independent country for Palestinians in territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, has long been the aim of international peace efforts but the process has been moribund since 2014.