M.AMINUR RAHMAN
Israeli forces moved into southern Gaza on Sunday, where countless civilians are seeking cover from bombardment and heavy fighting with Hamas attackers. Aid groups have warned of a "predictably catastrophic" humanitarian situation in the Palestinian Authority, warning that it is on the brink of starvation and disease. Hamas, which runs Gaza, said on Sunday that Israel had launched an "extraordinarily ferocious attack" targeting the southern city of Khan Younis and the road from that point to Rafah near the Egyptian border. An AFP writer detailed the attack in southern Gaza early Sunday morning.
According to the latest figures from Gaza's Hamas-run welfare service, fewer than 17,700 people, mostly women and children, have died in the two months of fighting in the enclave's stronghold. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented attack on October 7, when fighters came through Gaza's mobilized lines, killing about 1,200 people and taking prisoners, as indicated by Israeli authorities. Israel said on Saturday that 137 hostages were being held in Palestinian territories.With few options for recovery, individuals across the Gaza Strip sought refuge in emergency clinics on Saturday.
In northern Gaza City, an AFP writer said thousands were protecting the al-Shifa emergency clinic, which was operating and mostly wiped out after an Israeli attack a month ago. Many shabby tents designed from scraps of texture and plastic fill emergency clinic patios and nurseries amid crumbling walls. Suhail Abu Dalfa, 56, from the Shejaiya area of the city, said he escaped heavy attacks by Israeli aircraft and tanks."It was madness. A shell hit the house and injured my 20-year-old child," he told AFP. "We fled to the Old City, everything was just strikes and destruction... We didn't have the foggiest idea where to go," he said.
"We couldn't tell if they would storm the clinic in the future." In focal Gaza, Hamas wellbeing experts said on Saturday that 71 bodies showed up at the Deir al-Balahr al-Aqsa Saints Clinic over 24 hours. Furthermore, 62 bodies were shown at the Nasr emergency clinic in Khan Yunis, south of the domain, health experts said. An AFP journalist at the Nasser Medical Clinic saw a man on a small cot and others clinging to a car on the floor, while firefighters tried to disperse an engulfing structure hit by an Israeli strike. Oxfam's Bushra Khalidi said the situation was "not just a fragility, it is destroying the whole world".
'Death Penalty for Children'
1.9 million of Gaza's 2.4 million people are expected to be uprooted. Prevented from leaving the tight territory, they turned Rafah, near the junction with Egypt, into a huge camp. The United Nations Kids Organization said on Saturday that nearly 1,000,000 young people have been effectively displaced by the conflict. As fighting intensifies in southern Gaza, where Israel has recently encouraged regular people to seek cover, children are running out of safe places to go. "They are now being pushed further south without limit to water, food or unsafe, packed areas, putting them at greater risk of respiratory contamination and waterborne infections," said UNICEF's Adele Khodor. "The restrictions and difficulties placed on transporting life-saving aid into and across the Gaza Strip are another death sentence for young people."
As warnings grew over the devastating humanitarian situation in Gaza, Israeli Armed Forces Chief Harji Halevi encouraged his forces to "press harder" on their mission. "We are seeing an increasing number of psychological militants being killed, an increasing number of intimidators being injured, and of late we are seeing psychological militants giving up -- a sign of the self-destruction of their organization," he said at a service in Jerusalem. Public safety consultant Zachi Hanegbi told Israeli television that 7,000 "terrorists" had been killed, without elaborating on the source of the number.
In Tel Aviv, some Israelis advocated a demonstration of harmony. Many others gathered in what became known as Prisoners' Square, with messages calling for action to save the hostages held by Hamas, for example, "They trust us to put them out of their misery". The Israeli armed forces said they lost 93 fighters in the mission, with two more injured in a bomb attack on the hostage rescue on Thursday night. Hamas said a prisoner, 25-year-old Sahar Baruch, was killed in the attack, later confirmed by his kibbutz Berri, one of the most apparently horrific casualties on October 7.
UN forces hit
An interesting UN Security Chamber vote on a disputed ceasefire was rejected on Friday by the US, whose envoy Robert Wood said the proposal was "disconnected from the real world" and would leave Hamas in power in Gaza. Iran, which backs Hamas, warned of a "wild explosion in the local situation" after the rejection. The traditional trade-off between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah has raised fears of a wider regional conflict. Israel's military said it retaliated on Saturday after unspecified "dispatch" from Lebanon involving rival jets. An assembled country peacekeeper in southern Lebanon was hit without causing damage on Saturday, UN forces said, as they tried to determine the source of the fire.
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Saturday forced Gaza to turn away any ship that made a beeline for Israeli ports without food and medicine permits. Brutality has similarly flooded the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where health officials said three people were killed on Saturday. The military previously said it had captured 2,200 people in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, 1,800 of them Hamas figures.
news source:-AFP
Photo: collected.
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