RAFAH (AFP) – Israel struck Gaza Sunday and troops were battling in several areas of the Palestinian territory after an Israeli evacuation order sent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing from Rafah.
More than seven months into the war, United Nations (UN) chief Antonio Guterres urged “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate surge in humanitarian aid” into the besieged Gaza Strip.
“But a ceasefire will only be the start,” Guterres told a donor conference in Kuwait. “It will be a long road back from the devastation and trauma of this war.”
AFP correspondents, witnesses and medics said Israeli air strikes pounded parts of northern, central and southern Gaza during Saturday night and into Sunday.
In Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city which sits on the Egyptian border, the Kuwaiti hospital said Sunday it had received the bodies of “18 martyrs” killed in Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours.
Gaza’s civil defence agency reported at least two fatalities, a father and son, both doctors, in a strike on Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
Months after Israel said it had dismantled Hamas’ command structure in northern Gaza, which was devastated by intense violence in the early stages of the war, fighting has resumed in recent days in Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said late on Saturday that “in recent weeks we have identified attempts by Hamas to rebuild its military capabilities in Jabalia, and we are acting to destroy these attempts”. He also said there was an operation in Zeitun.
AFP correspondents reported intense clashes and heavy gunfire from Israeli helicopters in the Zeitun area early yesterday, with medics and witnesses saying troops were engaged in combat in Zeitun as well as Jabalia.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,034 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Israel defied international opposition this week and sent tanks and troops into eastern Rafah, effectively shutting a key aid crossing.
The military on Saturday expanded an evacuation order for eastern Rafah and said 300,000 Palestinians had left the area.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, gave a similar estimate of “around 300,000 people” who have fled Rafah over the past week, decrying in a post on X the “forced and inhumane displacement of Palestinians” who have “nowhere safe to go” in Gaza.
Palestinians in Rafah, many of them displaced by the fighting elsewhere in the territory, piled water tanks, mattresses and other belongings onto vehicles and prepared to flee again.
“The artillery shelling didn’t stop at all” for several days, said Mohammed Hamad, 24, who has left eastern Rafah for the city’s west.
“We will not move until we feel that the danger is advancing to the west,” he told AFP.
“There is no safe place in Gaza where we can take refuge.”
