Israel has begun the third phase of its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, launching an attack on areas densely populated by refugee camps, The Independent reports.
Daniel Hagari, an Israeli army spokesman said Israeli troops have advanced into the centre of Gaza. Israel had previously conducted military operations in the north, and in November military operations moved to the main southern city of Khan Younis. Now the organisation’s forces are operating across the entire sector.
Residents of the Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps in central Gaza reported heavy bombardment early Wednesday morning. Rami Abu Mosab, speaking from the Bureij camp, where he has been sheltering since fleeing his home in northern Gaza, said:
It was a night of hell. We haven’t seen such bombing since the start of the war.
Some 2 million Palestinians, about 85 per cent of the total population, were forced to flee their homes. Most of them made their way to Rafah in southern Gaza, on the border with Egypt, or to Deir Balah in the centre.
Ahmed Bayram, a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian group working mainly in southern Gaza, says there is no room left for refugees. Speaking about central Gaza, he told The Independent:
These are overcrowded residential areas and refugee camps that house tens of thousands. This unlawful strategy of forcible transfers has repeated itself five or six times already in just under three months. There is no space to accommodate those fleeing to Deir Balah or southern Gaza.
He said medicine, food and water are becoming increasingly scarce and disease is becoming more common.
More than 21,100 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in nearly three months of fighting, including about 200 in the past 24 hours, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes came after a deadly Hamas attack on Israeli territory on 7 October killed 1,200 people and took another 240 hostages. The aerial bombardment razed Gaza to the ground, destroying thousands of buildings and closing more than a dozen hospitals.
