Displaced Gaza residents in the south face dangers they had tried to flee

The Israeli military warned Friday it was stepping up operations in the southern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people had fled for safety, while hospital officials said Israel had bombed an area in the south where it had ordered civilians to seek shelter.

At least 18 people were killed and dozens of others injured near the Kuwait Specialty Hospital, according to hospital staff, who said the attack hit a house in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

In what an Israeli defense official described as a “vital” phase in the war to eliminate Hamas, the army carried out a series of attacks over the past day in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, using airstrikes, sniper fire and tank attacks. rounds.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, called the attacks an important part of the mission to destroy the militant group and its weapons caches.

“Our operations are essential to achieving the objectives of the war,” he said. “We are seeing the results and the destruction of enemy forces.”

Palestinian health officials said dozens of civilians had been killed in the raids, while a United Nations official said Israeli forces fired on a UN convoy of armored vehicles on Thursday evening as it returned from a relief mission in the northern part of the territory.

No one in the convoy was injured, the official said, but the event highlighted the serious challenges facing humanitarian efforts to help Palestinians struggling to survive amid Israel’s nearly 12-week bombardment of the enclave.

“Israeli soldiers shot at an aid convoy as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli army,” Thomas White, Gaza director of UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on social media. He said one vehicle in the convoy was damaged, adding: “First responders should never be a target.”

Amid widespread calls for a ceasefire and outrage over the more than 20,000 people Gazan officials say have been killed in the war, the International Court of Justice said on Friday that South Africa had filed a request for proceedings against Israel starting because of what it said. These were acts in Gaza that were ‘genocidal in nature’.

A press release from the court said the complaint accused Israel of trying to “destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Friday it “rejects with disgust the blood libel spread by South Africa,” saying Hamas was responsible for the suffering of Palestinians by using them as human shields.

“Israel has made it clear that the residents of the Gaza Strip are not the enemy and is doing everything it can to limit damage to those not involved and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.

The Israeli army has rarely admitted guilt over the course of the war in recent days.

On Thursday it said it had caused “unintentional damage” to “uninvolved civilians” in two attacks this week on a densely populated neighborhood in the Gaza Strip.

And in findings released Thursday, the military said the mistaken killing of three Israeli hostages this month “could have been prevented,” but added that military operations in the area were “conducted under complex circumstances and under intense combat conditions under a long-term threat.”

Israeli troops are entering the community of Khirbat Ikhza’a in southern Gaza, the army said Friday, just across the border from Nir Oz, a kibbutz that was one of several southern Israeli communities targeted by Hamas during the deadly attacks of October 7. Israeli officials say 1,200 people have been killed.

Israeli forces “are working to gain operational control of the Khirbat Ikhza’a area,” the army said, releasing footage of troops running past the rubble of destroyed homes and taking up positions among backyard citrus trees in what the war were residential areas.

The army said “dozens of terrorists” had been killed in central and southern Gaza and posted videos of airstrikes and footage of a soldier piloting a drone into a tunnel shaft. Other photos showed ammunition and military uniforms that Israeli forces said they found in abandoned homes, items placed next to household appliances.

At the same time, news photographers in Gaza captured the conflict’s devastating human toll: an injured child on an operating table, arms limp and covered in dust, as he was jostled by medical personnel wearing bloodstained latex gloves; an injured woman buried under the rubble, her face half covered in fresh blood as men frantically tried to pull her out; a man and a woman outside a hospital, disheveled and with their faces contorted with sadness.

About 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, and those seeking shelter in the south have little place to go. The Kuwaiti hospital is less than a mile from Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Egypt is determined to keep closed.

The city’s border crossing with Egypt is also the main entry point for aid in the area, but Israel has continued to conduct military operations in the area, hampering relief efforts for residents who have become increasingly desperate for food and other essential supplies. were hindered.

After Thursday’s strike, many who arrived at Kuwait’s hospital had serious injuries, including head wounds and severed limbs, the hospital’s director, Dr. Suhaib Al Hams, said in a video on social media.

News photos from the scene of the strike showed people pulling young children from the rubble. In one image, a girl in colorful pajamas appeared limp as she was carried away.

An Al Jazeera correspondent who saw the strike and visited the hospital immediately afterwards, Tareq Abu Azzoumreported that it had destroyed a residential building.

Nesreen Joudeh, who has been sheltering with 29 members of her extended family in a two-bedroom apartment in Rafah, told The New York Times in text messages that the strikes on Thursday evening were “very intense, loud and close.” She said: “We are all terrified.”

Airstrikes took place near the apartment and the blasts destroyed the windows, she said. The apartment was already cold for Ms. Joudeh, 38, and her family, who slept on the floor without winter clothing or blankets.

If Israeli ground forces entered Rafah, she said, they would not know where to go.

“It should be safe, but no place in Gaza is safe,” she said.

Raja Abdulrahim And Abu Bakr Bashir reporting contributed.