Khan Younes, in the south of Gaza, is the scene of deadly fighting on Wednesday between Hamas and the Israeli army, which pushes residents to flee and threatens hospitals, at a time when the mediating countries are trying to reach a new truce in the devastated Palestinian territory.
Heavy strikes and tank fire, according to an AFP correspondent, again targeted Khan Younes, a largely destroyed city, which had become the epicenter of the war triggered on October 7 by the bloody attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement. against Israel.
The Israeli army admitted on Tuesday that it had begun to flood the tunnels dug by Hamas in the basement of Gaza, one of the major tactical objectives of the war.
This vast network of concrete corridors constitutes a trap for the soldiers and several hostages have been held there. Israel accuses Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, of having built them in particular under hospitals and other civilian buildings, thus justifying its bombings.
After almost four months of war, the United States, Egypt and Qatar are working behind the scenes to try to convince Israel and Hamas to commit to a new truce, after that of a week at the end of November which had allowed the release of 105 hostages in Gaza and 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Meeting in Cairo
The leader of Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh, in exile in Qatar, is expected in Cairo on Wednesday or Thursday for discussions on a truce project.
His delegation is to meet with “Egyptian intelligence officials”, a leader of the movement in Gaza told AFP, to discuss a proposal made during a recent meeting in Paris between CIA Director William Burns, and Egyptian, Israeli and Qatari officials.
Hamas, however, is demanding a total ceasefire as a prerequisite for any agreement, particularly on the release of Israeli hostages.
Israel, for its part, refuses any cessation of fighting until the Islamist movement, which it considers a terrorist organization like the United States and the European Union, is eliminated.
Hamas “will insist on the need for a total cessation of the Israeli aggression”, “a withdrawal of the occupying forces and the return of the displaced to the north of the Gaza Strip”, added this official, affirming that the movement rejected “any proposal” from Israel which would concern “a partial and temporary ceasefire”.
On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, which resulted in the death of 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
In total, some 250 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli authorities, 132 hostages remain held there, 29 of whom are believed to have died.
In response, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas and launched a vast military operation which left 26,900 dead, the vast majority civilians, according to the Palestinian movement’s Ministry of Health.
“Left to our own devices”
The fighting and bombings left 150 dead in 24 hours across the territory, the Hamas Health Ministry announced on Wednesday.
“Dozens of raids” by Israeli aircraft targeted the center and west of Khan Yunis, “causing dozens of deaths and injuries,” said the Hamas government.
According to the army, “dozens of terrorists” were killed during a raid against installations of Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian armed group, in the west of the city.
“A workshop for manufacturing weapons, including long-range rockets, anti-tank missiles, mines and explosives” was destroyed, as well as an “underground route located in a tunnel”, added the army.
Wednesday morning, according to witnesses, artillery fire targeted the Nasser hospital in Khan Younès, the largest in the south of the territory.
Thousands of civilians have taken refuge there as well as in the Palestinian Red Crescent hospital, al-Amal, near where staff reported fighting and food shortages.
“We left the Nasser hospital without mattresses, under bombings and airstrikes. We didn’t know where to go. We are in the cold, left to our own devices, without tents and without anything to survive,” testified a woman who fled to Rafah, about twenty kilometers further south.
In the territory besieged by Israel, in the grip of a major humanitarian crisis, the bombings have pushed 1.7 million Palestinians, according to the UN, out of a total of 2.4 million inhabitants, to flee their homes.
Most headed south as the fighting spread. More than 1.3 million displaced people, according to the UN, are now crowded into Rafah, trapped against the closed border with Egypt.
Adding to the population’s distress, the civilian aid operations of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) are under threat after Israel accused 12 of the agency’s 30,000 regional employees of involvement in the attack of October 7.
Thirteen countries have suspended their funding to this agency.
Withdrawing funds from UNRWA “would lead to the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, with far-reaching consequences,” heads of several UN agencies warned.
Faced with the risk of a conflagration in the Middle East, the White House affirmed that the United States’ response would probably be “graduated”, after the death of three American soldiers on Sunday in Jordan, in a drone strike attributed to pro-Iran groups.