Bombing continued across Gaza on Friday as the United Nations warned Israel’s war with militant group Hamas, now approaching its fourth month, had made the territory “uninhabitable.”
With much of the Gaza Strip already reduced to rubble, air strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah as well as parts of central Gaza, AFP correspondents reported.
The Israeli army said its forces had “struck over 100 targets” across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites, and weapons depots.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said it had recorded 162 deaths over the same period.
A fighter jet bombed the central area of Bureij overnight, killing “an armed terrorist cell,” the army said, after what it described as an attempted attack on an Israeli tank.
And “a number” of Palestinian militants were killed in clashes in Khan Yunis, a city that has become a major battleground, the army said.
Troops also uncovered tunnels under the Blue Beach Hotel in northern Gaza which had been used “by terrorists as shelter from where they planned and executed attacks.”
Civilian deaths have soared during the conflict, and the UN has warned of a humanitarian crisis that has left hundreds of thousands displaced, facing famine and disease.
“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Friday.
“Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence — while the world watches on,” he said in a statement.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel launched by Hamas on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel, including at least 24 believed to have been killed.
At a commemorative gathering in southern Israel on Friday, Michael Levi, 41, whose brother Or Levi was kidnapped from a music festival, said “there’s a feeling none of us… can be safe in our own homes” since the attack.
In response, Israel has launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that have killed at least 22,600 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
AFPTV footage on Friday showed entire families, seeking safety from the violence, arriving in Rafah in overloaded cars and on foot, pushing handcarts stacked with possessions.
“We fled Jabalia camp to Maan (in Khan Yunis) and now we are fleeing from Maan to Rafah,” said one woman who declined to give her name. “(We have) no water, no electricity, and no food.”
A spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, told AFP that Rafah is overwhelmed by the influx.
“The city is usually home to only 250,000 persons. And now, it’s more than 1.3 million,” said Adnan Abu Hasna.
Abu Mohammed, 60, who fled to Rafah from Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, said he believed the future of the territory was “dark and gloomy and very difficult.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported renewed shelling and drone fire in the area around Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis after seven displaced people, including a five-day-old baby, were killed while sheltering in the compound.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant presented Israel’s first plan for the “day after,” though it has not yet been adopted by Israel’s war cabinet.
The minister’s outline proposals released late on Thursday say that neither Israel nor Hamas will govern Gaza and reject future Jewish settlements in the territory.
According to the proposals, the war will continue until Israel has dismantled Hamas’ “military apparatus” and destroyed its tunnels.
However, the plan also emphasizes the importance of humanitarian aid and reconstruction efforts in Gaza once the conflict ends.
The international community continues to call for an immediate ceasefire and a peaceful resolution to the conflict, but so far, a lasting agreement has proven elusive.
The people of Gaza remain caught in the crossfire, enduring unimaginable suffering and uncertainty as the violence shows no signs of abating.
As the world watches on, it is crucial that efforts are intensified to bring an end to this devastating conflict and provide the necessary support for the people of Gaza to rebuild their lives and their shattered communities.
Source: The Manila Times
