Israeli Tanks Push into Gaza's Rafah, as Displaced Civilians Flee Again
Editor
14 May 2024 18:00 WIB
FIERCE GUNBATTLES
Fighting across the strip has intensified in recent days, including in the north, with the Israeli military heading back into areas where it had claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago. Israel says the operations are to prevent Hamas, which controls Gaza, from rebuilding it military capacities.
The Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000, according to Gaza health officials, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters. It said that 82 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours, the highest death toll in a single day in many weeks.
Israel launched its operation in Gaza following the devastating attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas-led gunmen who rampaged through Israeli communities around the enclave, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Gun battles between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen were the fiercest in months, according to residents, both in the north and south of the densely populated enclave of 2.3 million people.
In the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City in the north, bulldozers demolished clusters of houses to make a new road for tanks to roll through into the eastern suburb.
In northern Gaza's Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago, residents said Israeli forces were trying to reach as deep as the camp's local market under heavy tank shelling.
The IDF said it had killed dozens of Hamas fighters in Jabalia and dismantled a network of explosives, while in Zeitoun it located tunnel shafts and destroyed several rocket launchers.
With fighting intensifying, Qatar's Sheikh Mohammed said ceasefire talks were at a stalemate.
"There is one party that wants to end the war and then talk about the hostages and there is another party who wants the hostages and wants to continue the war. As long as there is not any commonality between those two things it won't get us to a result," Sheikh Mohammed said.
REUTERS
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