- At least 25 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter in southern Gaza on Tuesday.
- Heavy shelling in northern Gaza has forced medical facilities in the city to close and thousands of people to evacuate.
- Israel has launched a new ground offensive in Gaza’s largest city to combat Hamas fighters who are regrouping in areas already cleared of them.
At least 25 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in southern Gaza, while heavy bombardment in the north forced the closure of medical facilities in Gaza City and sent thousands fleeing in search of increasingly hard-to-find shelter.
Israel’s new ground offensive in Gaza’s largest city is its latest effort to combat Hamas fighters who are regrouping in areas the military previously said it had largely cleared.
Much of Gaza City and the surrounding areas are ruined and devastated after nine months of fighting, and while many of its residents fled early in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the north.
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“The fighting was intense,” said Hakim Abdelbar, who fled from Gaza City’s Tufa neighborhood to relatives in another part of the city. He said Israeli warplanes and drones were “hitting everything that moved” and tanks had moved into central neighborhoods.
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in Israeli bombings of the Gaza Strip at the hospital morgue in Deir al-Balaf, July 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
An Associated Press reporter counting the bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said at least 25 people were killed in the attack at the school entrance. Hospital spokesman Weem Fares said the dead included at least seven women and children and that the death toll could rise.
At least 14 people, including one woman and four children, were killed in the latest airstrike in central Gaza, according to two hospitals that received the bodies. Israel has repeatedly struck suspected militant targets across Gaza since the start of the war nine months ago.
The army blames Hamas for the civilian deaths because the group is fighting in densely populated urban areas, but it rarely comments on individual airstrikes, which often kill women and children. The Israeli army said it was investigating the airstrike near the school and the reports of civilian casualties, and maintained that the strikes targeted Hamas fighters who took part in the October 7 attack on Israel.
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There were also no immediate announcements about casualties in Gaza City. Families of injured or trapped relatives have called for ambulances, but emergency workers have been unable to reach most of the affected areas because of Israeli military operations, said Neval Farsak, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent.
“It’s a danger zone,” she said.
According to the U.N., staff at two hospitals, Al-Ahli and Friends of Patients Hospital, scrambled to move patients and close them after Israel called for the evacuation of eastern and central Gaza City on Monday. Falsaf said all three medical facilities run by the Red Crescent in Gaza City had been closed.
Many patients were transferred to an Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, also the scene of heavy fighting early in the war. “We don’t know where to go. There’s no treatment, no basic necessities,” said Mohammed Abu Nasser, who was receiving treatment there. “We are slowly dying.”
The Israeli army said on Tuesday it had told hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza city that there was no need to evacuate, but hospitals in Gaza frequently close and move patients at the slightest sign of an Israeli attack for fear of being attacked.
The Anglican Communion of the Middle East, which runs Al Ahli hospital, said it had been “forced to close by Israeli forces” following evacuation orders on Sunday and a series of drone attacks on the nearby area.
Over the past nine months, Israeli forces have seized at least eight hospitals, causing the deaths of patients and medical staff and extensive destruction of facilities and equipment. Israel claims that Hamas is using the hospitals for military purposes but has provided limited evidence.
According to the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, and even those are only partially functional.
Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip, which began with a Hamas attack on October 7, has killed or injured more than 5 percent of the Strip’s 2.3 million residents, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and forced almost the entire population to flee their homes, many of whom have been displaced multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into tent camps in sweltering heat.
The UN humanitarian office said evacuations in Gaza City were “dangerously chaotic” and people were being told to flee through areas where fighting was ongoing.
“People have been seen fleeing in different directions, not knowing which direction is safest,” the agency said in a statement, adding that the city’s largest UN bakery had been forced to close and fighting had prevented aid groups from accessing its warehouse.
Maha Mahfouz, a mother of two, said she had fled twice in the past 24 hours. She first rushed to flee her home in Gaza City to a relative’s house in another neighborhood. When it became unsafe there, she fled on Monday night to Shatti, a refugee camp established decades ago that has now grown into a city and is subject to repeated Israeli raids.
She described extensive destruction in areas targeted in recent attacks: “Buildings have been destroyed, roads have been destroyed, everything has been reduced to rubble,” she said.
The Israeli military said it had received intelligence indicating that fighters from Hamas and smaller Islamic Jihad groups were regrouping in central Gaza City. Israel accuses Hamas and other fighters of hiding among civilians. In the Shijaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, where fighting has been ongoing for weeks, the army said it had destroyed three miles of Hamas tunnels.
Hamas has warned that the latest attacks on Gaza City could lead to the collapse of negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release agreement.
Israel and Hamas have appeared to narrow the gap in recent days thanks to mediation by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
CIA Director William Burns met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss the negotiations, el-Sisi’s office said. Further talks are scheduled to take place on Wednesday in Qatar, where Hamas has a political base.
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But obstacles remain after Hamas agreed to concede its key demand that Israel commit to ending the fighting as part of any agreement. Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that the talks end with a permanent ceasefire.
Israel rejects any agreement that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact, and Hamas on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “further obstructing negotiations,” including with the operation in Gaza City.
Israeli officials say a Hamas cross-border raid on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians. The militants took about 250 hostages. About 120 are still being held, and about a third are said to have died.
According to the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health, Israeli bombings and attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed more than 38,200 people and injured over 88,000, figures that do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
