Israel Battles Militants in Gaza’s Main Cities, with Civilians Trapped in the Fighting

Palestinians use a donkey-pulled cart to flee Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip further south toward Rafah, along the Salah Al-Din road, on December 10, 2023. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)
Palestinians use a donkey-pulled cart to flee Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip further south toward Rafah, along the Salah Al-Din road, on December 10, 2023. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)
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Israel Battles Militants in Gaza’s Main Cities, with Civilians Trapped in the Fighting

Palestinians use a donkey-pulled cart to flee Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip further south toward Rafah, along the Salah Al-Din road, on December 10, 2023. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)
Palestinians use a donkey-pulled cart to flee Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip further south toward Rafah, along the Salah Al-Din road, on December 10, 2023. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)

Palestinians dug under crushed buildings Monday to recover the bodies of families killed in strikes around Gaza as Israeli forces battled militants in the territory’s two largest cities, where many thousands of civilians are still trapped by the fighting.

Residents said battles went on in and around the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israeli ground forces opened a new line of attack last week. Battles were also still underway in parts of Gaza City and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, where large areas have been reduced to rubble.

Israel has pledged to keep fighting until it removes Hamas from power, dismantles its military capabilities and gets back all of the hostages taken by militants during Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack into Israel that ignited the war. The Israeli campaign has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and driven nearly 85% of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes.

In central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike overnight flattened a residential building where some 80 people were staying in the Maghazi refugee camp, residents said.

Ahmed al-Qarah, a neighbor who was digging through the rubble for survivors, said he knew of only six people who made it out. “The rest are under the building,” he said. At a nearby hospital, family members sobbed over the bodies of several of the dead from the strike.

In Khan Younis, Radwa Abu Frayeh saw heavy Israeli strikes overnight around the European Hospital, where the UN humanitarian office says tens of thousands of people have sought shelter. She said one hit a home close to hers late Sunday.

“The building shook,” she said. “We thought it was the end and we would die.”

Hussein al-Sayyed, who fled Gaza City earlier in the war with his three daughters, is staying in a three-story home in the city with around 70 others. He said they have been rationing food for days. “I don’t know where to go,” he said. “No place is safe.”

Hamas on Monday fired a barrage of rockets that set off sirens in Tel Aviv. One person was lightly wounded, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service. Israel's Channel 12 television broadcast footage of a cratered road and damage to cars and buildings in a suburb.

FIERCE FIGHTING In northern Gaza, Israeli forces and militants have been fighting in the refugee camp of Jabaliya and the Gaza City district of Shijaiya.

Large swaths of Gaza City and other parts of the north have been obliterated by weeks of bombardment and fighting, but tens of thousands of people are believed to remain, huddled in homes, UN shelters and hospitals.

The UN humanitarian office, known as OCHA, described a harrowing journey through the battle zone by a UN and Red Crescent convoy over the weekend that made the first delivery of medical supplies to the north in more than a week. It said an ambulance and UN truck were hit by gunfire on the way to Al-Ahly Hospital to drop off the supplies.

The convoy then evacuated 19 patients but was delayed for inspections by Israeli forces on the way south. OCHA said one patient died, and a paramedic was detained for hours, interrogated and reportedly beaten.

The fighting in Jabaliya has trapped hundreds of staff, patients and displaced people inside a number of hospitals, most of them unable to function.

Two staff members were killed over the weekend by clashes outside Al-Awda Hospital, OCHA said. Shelling and live ammunition hit Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital, killing an unknown number of displaced people sheltering inside, it said. It did not say which side was behind the fire.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas, saying it endangers residents by fighting in dense areas and positioning weapons, tunnels and rocket launchers in or near civilian buildings.

The military said five soldiers were killed Sunday in a battle in southern Gaza after militants fired at them from a school and set off an explosive device. Military officials said the troops, backed by aircraft and tanks, returned fire and killed the militants.

HARSH CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH With Israel allowing little aid into Gaza and the UN largely unable to distribute it amid the fighting, Palestinians face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods.

Israel has urged people to flee to what it says are safe areas in the south. The fighting in and around Khan Younis has pushed tens of thousands toward the town of Rafah and other areas along the border with Egypt.

Still, airstrikes have continued even in areas to which Palestinians are told to flee. A strike in Rafah early Monday heavily damaged a residential building, killing at least nine people, all but one of them women, according to Associated Press reporters who saw the bodies at the hospital.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders said people in the south are also falling ill as they pack into crowded shelters or sleep in tents in open areas.

Nicholas Papachrysostomou, the group's emergency coordinator in Gaza, said “every other patient” at a clinic in Rafah has a respiratory infection after prolonged exposure to cold and rain.

“In some shelters, 600 people share a single toilet. We are already seeing many cases of diarrhea. Often children are the worst affected,” he said.

With almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people crowded in the south, some worry that Palestinians will be forced out of the territory altogether in a repeat of the mass exodus from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.

“Expect public order to completely break down soon, and an even worse situation could unfold, including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a forum in Qatar on Sunday.

Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, called allegations that Israeli intends to drive people from Gaza “outrageous and false.” But other Israeli officials have discussed such a scenario, raising alarm in Egypt and other Arab countries that refuse to accept any refugees.

Palestinians in Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied West Bank observed a general strike Monday called by activists to demand a ceasefire, after the US vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for one on Friday. A similar, nonbinding vote is planned in the General Assembly on Tuesday.

The US has provided unwavering diplomatic and military support for the campaign, even as it has urged Israel to minimize civilian casualties and further mass displacement.

With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,900, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Some 1,300 people have died on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed during the Oct. 7 attack. The toll also includes 104 soldiers who have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive since late October.

During the Oct. 7 attack, militants took more than 240 people captive. After exchanges during a weeklong ceasefire last month. Israel says Hamas still has 117 hostages and the remains of 20 people who died in captivity or during the initial attack.



Lebanon's Hezbollah in Disarray after Second Wave of Deadly Blasts

A photo taken on September 18, 2024, in Beirut's southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display at an undisclosed location. (Photo by AFP)
A photo taken on September 18, 2024, in Beirut's southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display at an undisclosed location. (Photo by AFP)
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Lebanon's Hezbollah in Disarray after Second Wave of Deadly Blasts

A photo taken on September 18, 2024, in Beirut's southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display at an undisclosed location. (Photo by AFP)
A photo taken on September 18, 2024, in Beirut's southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display at an undisclosed location. (Photo by AFP)

Hezbollah was in disarray on Thursday after a second wave of deadly explosions swept through its strongholds across Lebanon, putting pressure on its leader to exact revenge for the operation it blames on Israel.
The attack killed 32 people in two days, including two children, and wounded more than 3,000 others, according to Lebanese health ministry figures.
Israel has not commented on the unprecedented operation that saw Hezbollah operatives' walkie-talkies and pagers exploding in supermarkets, at funerals and on streets.
But its defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday, in reference to Israel's border with Lebanon: "The center of gravity is moving northward."
"We are at the start of a new phase in the war", he said.
Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has been fighting a war in Gaza since its October 7 attack on Israel.
For nearly a year, the focus of Israel's firepower has been on Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas.
But its troops have also been engaged in near-daily clashes with Hezbollah militants along its northern border, killing hundreds in Lebanon, most of them fighters, and dozens more in Israel.
The exchanges of fire have also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.
Gallant said earlier this month that Hamas as a military formation "no longer exists".
Reeling from the operation that targeted its communication system, Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah said Israel was "fully responsible for this criminal aggression" and vowed revenge.
Hezbollah on Thursday said 20 of its members had been killed, with a source close to the group saying they had died when their walkie-talkies had exploded a day earlier.
At 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) on Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will give a previously unscheduled televised speech that will be watched closely by both his supporters and his enemies for any signals of what shape a response might take.
'Wider war'
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the "blatant assault on Lebanon's sovereignty and security" was a dangerous development that could "signal a wider war".
Iran's envoy to the UN said the country "reserves the right to take retaliatory measures" after its ambassador in Beirut was wounded in the blasts.
"We don't believe that the way to solve where we're at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all," US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
The October 7 attacks that sparked the war in Gaza resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said "the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes -- some people lost their sight."
A doctor at another hospital in the Lebanese capital said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were "out of this world -- never seen anything like it".
'Sabotaged at source'
Analysts said operatives had likely planted explosives on the pagers before they were delivered to Hezbollah.
Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
In Gaza on Wednesday, the civil defense agency said an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter killed five people, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.
In Lebanon, the influx of so many casualties following the blasts overwhelmed medics.
The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said.
"Data indicates the devices were pre-programmed to detonate and contained explosive materials planted next to the battery," the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were "recently imported" and appeared to have been "sabotaged at source".
After The New York Times reported that the pagers that exploded on Wednesday had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company said they had been produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT.
A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was "a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary".
Japanese firm Icom said that it had stopped producing the model of radios reportedly used in Wednesday's blasts in Lebanon around 10 years ago.