Intense fighting raged on Wednesday in Khan Younes, particularly near hospitals, in this town in the south of the Gaza Strip which has become the epicenter of fighting between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
While the humanitarian situation is more serious every day in the besieged Palestinian territory and the families of Israeli hostages in Gaza are increasing their pressure for their release, discussions are taking place in particular in Cairo with a view to obtaining a truce.
It was in the Khan Younes sector that 24 Israeli soldiers died on Monday, making this the bloodiest day for the Israeli army in the Palestinian territory since the start of its ground operation at the end of October.
The war was sparked by the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 on Israeli soil, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Some 250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, including around 100 released at the end of November during a truce in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. According to the same count, 132 hostages are still in the territory, of whom 28 are believed to have died.
Evacuation order
After the attack, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched a vast military operation which killed 25,700 Palestinians, the vast majority women, children and adolescents, according to a new report Wednesday from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The Israeli army massively bombed the north of the territory at the start of the war, causing the displacement of 1.7 million people further south, and is now concentrating its operations, particularly on land, on the Khan Younes sector, which it said to be surrounding and where, according to them, leaders of Hamas, an organization classified as “terrorist” by Israel, the United States and the European Union, are hiding.
Some “88,000 inhabitants and around 425,000 displaced people” located in several sectors of Khan Younes were called on Tuesday by Israel to evacuate them, according to the UN, but the fighting makes the slightest movement extremely dangerous.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, hospitals received 125 bodies of people killed overnight in the Gaza Strip, with the Hamas government speaking of “more than 200 deaths.”
Hamas accused Israel of wanting to forcibly move “tens of thousands of people” from Khan Yunis to Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
Among the areas to be evacuated are three hospitals, including that of Nasser, surrounded by dozens of tanks “on all sides” except a “corridor” for people to leave, according to the Hamas media office.
This source spoke of “violent strikes nearby”, and the Health Ministry warned of “disastrous repercussions” if Israeli forces carried out a raid against this establishment, the largest in the south of the territory.
“Thousands of displaced people in Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals were forced to leave overnight and this morning for Rafah,” the Hamas office said.
But Rafah is not spared. Men and women gathered on Wednesday in front of the remains of loved ones killed in bombings, placed on the ground in front of a morgue, according to an AFP journalist.
The World Health Organization deplored an “indescribable” situation in Khan Younes hospitals on Wednesday.
“Encircled”
Shafiq al-Taluli, a 54-year-old poet, said he was stuck in a school run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Al-Mawasi, an area between Khan Younes and Rafah in which he was staying. was a refugee with other displaced people. “We were surrounded by Israeli tanks and the army ordered us not to go out […] those who did not obey were killed.”
On the diplomatic front, a Hamas delegation has been in Cairo since Tuesday to “discuss with the head of Egyptian intelligence a new ceasefire proposal”, according to a source close to the talks.
Brett McGurk, advisor to the American president for the Middle East, was also in the Egyptian capital on Tuesday to discuss a “pause” in hostilities and the release of the hostages, according to Washington.
A White House spokesperson, John Kirby, reported “very serious conversations”.
The war is exacerbating regional tensions between Israel and its American ally on the one hand, and Iran and its backers such as Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis and Iraqi militias on the other.
Baghdad denounced on Wednesday an “irresponsible escalation” after new American strikes in Iraq, killing one person, against sites held by pro-Iran armed groups, bombings carried out in retaliation for attacks against American soldiers in the country.
The United States also carried out two new strikes in Yemen on Wednesday against the Houthi rebels who threaten maritime traffic in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, in “solidarity” with Gaza.