The southern Gaza town of Khan Younis has come under an unrelenting attack from the Israeli military since the collapse Friday of a truce between Israel and Hamas militants. According to the Associated Press, Israel has widened its evacuation orders as its offensive shifts to the southern part of Gaza, where it says many Hamas leaders are hiding.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the campaign would last until all hostages seized by Hamas during the militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel are returned and Hamas is eliminated.
“A tough war is ahead of us,” he said.
“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday. “Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and video coming from Gaza are devastating,” she said from the COP 28 climate conference in Dubai.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said while U.S. “support for Israel’s security is non-negotiable,” he has personally warned Israel that if it did not take steps to protect civilians, it risked their radicalization.
“In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” Austin said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California.
At the forum of political and military leaders and others, he pressed Israel to dramatically expand Gaza's access to humanitarian aid and renewed U.S. calls for a two-state solution to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Civilian casualties
At least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the collapse of the Israel-Hamas truce Friday morning, raising the death toll in Gaza since the October Hamas attack to more than 15,200 people with more than 40,000 wounded, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. The ministry says 70% of them are women and children.
About 2 million Palestinians, almost the entire population of Gaza, are now crammed into the territory's southern half. They are running out of space where they can flee and seek shelter. The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that nearly 80% of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced.
The Israeli military said Saturday it hit more than 400 Hamas targets across Gaza over the previous day, using airstrikes and shelling from tanks and navy gunships. It included more than 50 strikes on Khan Younis and surrounding areas in the southern half of Gaza.
In northern Gaza, an airstrike destroyed a residential building hosting displaced families in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya on the outskirts of Gaza City. The strike on the multistory building left dozens dead or wounded, said residents Hamza Obeid and Amal Radwan.
Israel began its military campaign to wipe out Hamas after Hamas fighters crossed into southern Israel in October. Israel said 1,200 people were killed and some 240 captives taken. The United States, Britain, the European Union and others have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.
“We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it’s impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation,” Netanyahu also said Saturday.
Hamas has fired more than 250 rockets on southern Israel since the cease-fire ended, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesperson, said.
In southern Israel, sirens were heard in communities near the Gaza Strip but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The Israeli military published an online map dividing the Gaza Strip into hundreds of numbered parcels and asked residents to familiarize themselves with the number of their location ahead of evacuation warnings.
Israel has accused Hamas of embedding itself in and underneath hospitals and other civilian areas and encouraging civilians to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate ahead of airstrikes, using them in effect as human shields, an accusation Hamas has denied.
The Reuters news agency said it could not confirm the battlefield accounts.
This article originated from VOA News. Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
