Thousands of Palestinian civilians fled the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, seeking refuge from Israeli airstrikes and fierce ground fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants, Reuters reports.
Israel has ordered Gaza civilians to evacuate or risk being trapped in violence. But the central and southern parts of the small Palestinian enclave under siege were also shelled as the war between the Islamist Hamas movement and Israel entered its second month.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said an airstrike on homes in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Wednesday morning killed 18 people. In Khan Younis, an airstrike killed six people, including a little girl. A witness, Mohammed Abu Daqa said:
“We were sitting in peace when all of a sudden an F16 air strike landed on a house and blew it up, the entire block, three houses next to each other. Civilians, all of them civilians. An old woman, an old man and there are others still missing under the rubble.”
Israel said the army offensive was directed against a network of Hamas tunnels under the enclave. A weapons manufacturer and several Hamas militants were killed in the airstrikes.
Gaza City, the main stronghold of Hamas militants in the territory, is now completely surrounded by Israeli troops. The military says Israeli troops have advanced to the centre of the densely populated city, while Hamas says its fighters have suffered heavy losses.
UN and G7 officials have been vigorously calling for a humanitarian pause in the fighting to ease the suffering of civilians in Gaza, where buildings have flattened and basic supplies are almost running low.
Palestinian officials say 10,569 people have been killed so far, 40 per cent of them children. The level of death and suffering “is hard to imagine,” Christian Lindmeier, a spokesman for the UN health agency, said in Geneva.
Israel struck the Gaza Strip in response to a cross-border Hamas raid into southern Israel on 7 October in which militants killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
