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Palestinians were displaced again on Tuesday as Israeli forces launched a major offensive in southern Gaza’s war-torn main city, with a shelter converted into a school coming under deadly attack.
A source at a hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza said a school in nearby Abasan was attacked, killing at least 29 people.
The Israeli military said its air force carried out a strike against a “terrorist” in the area and would review the matter.
Since Saturday, Israel has carried out three attacks on schools used by displaced Palestinians across Gaza, killing at least 20 people in total, according to officials and aid workers.
In the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli troops, tanks and fighter jets attacked Gaza City on the eve of a new deal with Qatar aimed at finalizing a hostage prisoner exchange and ending a war that has lasted for its 10th month.
CIA Director William Burns and Israel’s Mossad chief David Bania are due to travel to Qatar on Wednesday after Burns held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo.
Hamas, which launched the war with an attack on Oct. 7, has softened a key demand and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately escalating the fighting to prevent a deal.
The Islamist group’s political leader in Qatar, Ismail Haniyeh, said he had warned mediators that the “catastrophic consequences” of the latest fighting could “reset the negotiation process.”
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, described the latest fighting in Gaza City as the “heaviest in months”.
The United Nations says tens of thousands of civilians have been affected by the escalating fighting since the first of three evacuations from Gaza City was announced on June 27.
Filippo Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, said that “around 350,000 people are on the run again,” but there is “virtually no safe space in Gaza.”
– ‘Hunger Movement’ –
After nearly two weeks of fighting in the Shujaiya area in eastern Gaza City, the Israeli army further expanded the fighting to the east, west and south of the city.
Residents told AFP they saw helicopter attacks, “explosions and multiple gun battles” in the southwest of the city.
Elsewhere in Gaza, witnesses said there was shelling near the centre of the Nusserat refugee camp in the south of the region and west of Rafah.
The Israeli military said its air and ground forces were pursuing Palestinian militants in Gaza City, six months after it claimed to have dismantled Hamas’ “military framework” in northern Gaza.
The UN human rights office said it was “alarmed” that civilians were being ordered to go to areas where “military operations are ongoing and civilians are being killed and injured”, with many of them having been displaced multiple times.
We saw thousands of people walking along dusty roads past bombed-out buildings, mothers holding babies and others loading belongings onto donkey carts.
Independent UN human rights experts have accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza and constitutes “a form of genocidal violence”.
The experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but do not speak for the UN, said: “Since October 7, 34 Palestinians, most of them children, have died from malnutrition.”
Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva accused members of the panel of “spreading misinformation” and “pro-Hamas propaganda.”
– ‘Only lifeline’ –
Yussef Jaber, 24, said there was barely any food in northern Gaza, lamenting that “it is a life of shame and humiliation.”
“We had nothing except some flour and canned food that made us sick,” he said. “We had no vegetables to cook and no meat.”
More than nine months of war has led to the closure of several hospitals across Gaza, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Tuesday that all its medical facilities in the Gaza City area have ceased services.
“The closure of these vital medical facilities is exacerbating an already dire situation in the healthcare system,” said Jagan Chapaghein, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, on social media platform X.
“These clinics and health posts are often the only lifeline for many civilians.”
Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants took 251 hostages, of whom 116 remained in Gaza, and the military said 42 had died.
Israel responded with a military offensive that left at least 38,243 people dead in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-controlled areas.
Hamas has said it will drop its insistence on a “comprehensive” ceasefire – a demand Israel has repeatedly rejected – as a condition for launching ceasefire talks, which are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt with U.S. support.
Netanyahu’s office has laid out conditions, including that “any agreement would allow Israel to return to the battlefield until all objectives of the war are achieved.”
Clash with Hezbollah
As the fighting in Gaza continues to spread, Israel has also been frequently engaged in cross-border fighting with Hamas’ ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, heightening concerns about an all-out war.
Hezbollah on Tuesday released a video showing what it claimed was aerial surveillance footage of intelligence and military positions in the Israeli-annexed Syrian Golan Heights.
Rocket attacks killed two Israelis in the Golan Heights on Tuesday, police said.
Last week, an Israeli strike killed a senior Hezbollah commander, and Hezbollah retaliated with rockets and drones.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on the 10th told Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to “stop threats and violence” and “withdraw troops” from the border area to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last major war between the two sides in 2006.
Israel’s top diplomat said Nasrallah “will be seen as the destroyer of Lebanon” if a full-scale conflict breaks out.
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