Israel pummels southern Gaza as UN labels strip ‘hell on Earth’
Israeli tanks and warplanes pommeled southern Gaza on Tuesday as the UN called the war-torn strip “hell on Earth”.
In Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s main city which Israel troops began storming last week, residents said tank shelling was now focused on the city center. One said tanks were operating on Tuesday morning in the street where the house of Yahya Al-Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, is located. Further south in Rafah, which borders Egypt, health officials said 22 people including children were killed in an Israeli airstrike on houses overnight. Civil emergency workers were searching for more victims under the rubble.
More than two months into the war sparked by the October 7 attack, the visiting chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, likened Gaza to “hell on earth”.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry charged Tuesday that Israeli forces were raiding Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza City, the biggest urban center, in the north of the coastal territory.
The army did not immediately comment, but Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas resistance group uses hospitals, schools, mosques and tunnels beneath them as military bases – the charges that Hamas has denied. The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said earlier that “the hospital remains surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks, and fighting with armed groups has been reported in its vicinity for three consecutive days”.
It said two mothers were killed in a strike on the maternity ward and that about 3,000 internally displaced people were trapped in the facility amid reports of “extreme shortages of water, food and power”.
Starvation
An Israeli ground assault that had been confined to the north has expanded to the southern half of the strip since a week-long truce collapsed at the start of December. Residents and aid agencies say that means no place is now safe in a territory where bombing has already rendered the vast majority of people homeless and nearly all areas are entirely cut off from food, medicine and fuel.
Hunger is worsening, with the UN World Food Programme saying half of Gaza’s population is starving.
The OCHA said on Tuesday limited aid distributions were taking place in the Rafah district, but “in the rest of the Gaza Strip, aid distribution has largely stopped over the past few days, due to the intensity of hostilities and restrictions of movement along the main roads”.
Richard Peeperkorn, World Health Organization Representative for Gaza and the West Bank, said the WHO was considering a Gaza Health Ministry request for help with a potential evacuation of patients and staff from the hospital. The WHO said on Sunday the risk of disease in Gaza had grown while the health system had been reduced to a third of its pre-conflict capacity. UN officials say at least 1.9 million people – 85% of Gaza’s population – are displaced, and describe conditions in the southern areas where they have concentrated as hellish. The health ministry in Gaza Strip said Monday the death toll of the war has risen to 18,205 in the Palestinian territory.
Reuters and AFP contributed to this report.