Violent clashes between the Israeli army and Hamas in Gaza… and civilians are in an “unbearable” situation

On Tuesday, the Israeli army intensified its operations against the Palestinian Hamas movement in the southern Gaza Strip, where witnesses reported violent battles, raising fears of a “more terrifying scenario” for civilians.

The Israeli army, which has been launching a ground attack in the northern besieged Strip since October 27, has expanded the scope of its ground operations to include the entire Gaza Strip with the deployment of tanks near Khan Yunis, which has become the focus of the new confrontations, nearly two months after the start of the war.

Since the resumption of fighting on December 1, after a seven-day truce, the Israeli army has been bombing the southern Gaza Strip, causing many deaths and injuries in this area, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have taken refuge since the beginning of the war, where they live in temporary shelters.

They are now trapped in an environment that is shrinking day by day near the closed border with Egypt, and they have nowhere to go.

The bombing and fighting intensified in the northern Gaza Strip as well, as the Israeli army announced that it “took control of important sites” for the Hamas movement. The Israeli army, which currently controls several areas in the northern Gaza Strip, carried out operations “in the Jabalia area,” which is the largest Palestinian refugee camp. In the Gaza Strip and is currently besieged. According to witnesses, dozens of strikes targeted several neighborhoods in Gaza City, forcing thousands of civilians to flee.

On the other hand, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, announced from an official account on Telegram, “Bombarding occupied Beersheba with a missile salvo in response to the massacres against civilians.”

Witnesses told Agence France-Presse that Israeli forces carried out air and artillery bombardments on Monday night near Khan Yunis and on neighboring Rafah at the southern end of the Strip, as well as on Deir al-Balah to the north.

The Hamas media office announced that the night bombing left dozens dead in the Gaza Strip. The bombing killed 24 people in a school housing displaced people in Khan Yunis, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.

The Israeli army confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that it was engaged in clashes in “the heart of the Khan Yunis area,” after announcing the expansion of its ground operations following the failure of negotiations to extend the truce that lasted for seven days.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini explained on Monday that the Israeli bombing came after “a new evacuation order from Khan Yunis to Rafah, which sparked panic, fear and anxiety.”

He added: “At least 60,000 additional people were forced to move to overcrowded UNRWA shelters, and many of them have been displaced several times” since the beginning of the war.

The United Nations said on Tuesday that it was “impossible” to create so-called safe zones for civilians to flee to inside the Gaza Strip amid the Israeli bombing campaign.

“These areas cannot be safe or inhumane when declared unilaterally,” James Elder, spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told reporters in Geneva via video link from Cairo.

The Palestinian Wafa Agency reported early Tuesday morning that “several” deaths had occurred in a bombing of Gaza City.

On the other hand, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, announced from an official account on Telegram: “Bombarding occupied Beersheba with a missile salvo in response to the massacres against civilians.”

International organizations expressed their concern about the dangers facing civilians in Gaza, where “telephone and Internet service has stopped” due to the main paths that were previously reconnected being cut off again from the Israeli side, according to the Palestinian Telecommunications Company (Paltel).

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lynn Hastings, said, “An even more terrifying scenario is about to unfold, one that humanitarian operations may not have the capacity to respond to.”

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spolijaric, who arrived in Gaza on Monday, said that the suffering of the population in the besieged Palestinian Strip is “unbearable.”

She confirmed on the “X” platform, “The things I saw there exceeded anything that anyone could be in a position to describe.” “What shocked me most were the children who were horribly injured and at the same time lost their parents without anyone taking care of them.”

Chaos in Nasser Hospital

On Tuesday morning, scenes of chaos were repeated in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the largest in the southern Gaza Strip, after the bombing operations tonight.

Many people said they lost loved ones in an air strike that hit a school housing refugees.

Among them is Muhammad Saloul, who lost his sister. He said: “Her body was in the school playground. We had to carry it ourselves. We saw human remains in the school, although the bombing was not targeting that school directly, but rather the surrounding area.”

According to UNRWA, this hospital, crowded with wounded and lacking medical staff and supplies, houses more than a thousand patients in addition to 17,000 displaced people.

The Hamas Ministry of Health announced on Monday that the death toll had risen to 15,899, 70 percent of whom were women, children and teenagers, as a result of Israeli bombing since October 7.

On Monday evening, Israeli military officials announced that for every civilian killed in the attack on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a fighter from the Palestinian movement was killed.

During a chat with journalists, one of these officials, who requested to remain anonymous, said: “I am not saying that it is a good thing for the ratio to be two to one,” attributing the reason to Hamas’ use of Palestinian civilians as “human shields.”

The Hamas attack led to the death of 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, the majority of whom died on the first day of the attack, according to the Israeli authorities.

The Israeli army announced on Tuesday morning that three soldiers had been killed the previous day in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll of soldiers to 78 since the start of the ground operation.

For its part, the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote on the “X” platform that it had documented, as of December 4, the killing of 63 journalists and media workers, namely 56 Palestinians, 4 Israelis, and 3 Lebanese, in addition to the injury of 11 journalists, the loss of 3 journalists, and the arrest of 19 journalists.

According to the Israeli army, 137 hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip after the release of 105 hostages, including eighty who were released in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons during the truce.

For his part, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, confirmed on Tuesday that the war in Gaza between Israel and the Hamas movement represents a “heinous crime… It is a shame” that it continues about two months after its outbreak, as he opened a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Doha. .

The needs have become enormous in the Gaza Strip, which is subject to an applied Israeli siege. According to the United Nations, 1.8 million people have been displaced due to the war, out of the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.4 million people.

The WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, Ahmed Al-Mandhari, from Egypt, said: “We witnessed what happened in northern Gaza. This matter cannot constitute a model for the South.”

The Israeli army asked international humanitarian organizations to “support them to help with facilities in the Al-Mawasi area,” a coastal area in the southern Gaza Strip between Khan Yunis and Rafah, to which Israel requires civilians to go.

The hostilities extend to the occupied West Bank, the Israeli-Lebanese border, and various locations in the Middle East, where American forces are targeted.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in the occupied West Bank announced on Tuesday: “The martyrdom of the young man, Muhammad Yousef Hassan Manasra (25 years old), in Qalandiya, and 4 injuries in the Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem due to occupation bullets, one of which is very critical.”

Five Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire during army military operations in various areas in the occupied West Bank on Monday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. At dawn on Tuesday, soldiers were deployed in the Jenin area, the local stronghold of the Palestinian factions.