The Israeli military kept up the pressure on northern Gaza on Wednesday, striking in a suburb of Gaza City, medics said, and told residents in a central part of the enclave to evacuate from an area where militants were firing rockets.
Air strikes in Shejaiya, a suburb of Gaza City, killed at least eight Palestinians, according to local emergency services.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not immediately clear who was killed in the attack.
In Al-Buriej, in central Gaza, the Israeli military said it struck a militant operating in an area from which rockets had been fired into Israel the previous day. Its Arabic spokesperson, in a post on X, had ordered people to leave the area before the strike.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said two people had been killed in that strike and 15 more in an airstrike in Jabalia. There was no immediate confirmation from Gaza health officials.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fuelling speculation, which Israel denies, that it intends to keep the area as a buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.
Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm’s way, the military says.
No end in sight
Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.
According to the Palestinian Civil Defence, more than 1,500 tents sheltering displaced people across Gaza were flooded by heavy rains over the past two days, leaving people exposed to the cold and their belongings damaged.
Israel’s Gaza campaign has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny coastal strip is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
An Israeli raid shut down a major Gaza hospital on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. The Kamal Adwan Hospital was the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza, and WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris says this ‘essential’ lifeline for local Palestinians is gone.
The Israeli military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas. The army says it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Hundreds of thousands live in tents on the coast as winter brings frequent rainstorms and temperatures drop below 10 C at night. At least six infants and another person have died of hypothermia, according to the Health Ministry.
Many displaced Palestinians in central Gaza rely on charity kitchens as their sole food provider amid restrictions on aid and skyrocketing prices. AP footage showed a long line of children waiting for rice, the only item served at the kitchen in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday.
“Some of those kitchens close because they don’t receive aid, and others distribute little amounts of food and its not enough,” said Umm Adham Shaheen, displaced from Gaza City.
American and Arab mediators have spent nearly a year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release, but those efforts have repeatedly stalled.
Hamas has demanded a lasting truce, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu has vowed to keep fighting until “total victory.”
