Dozens of Israeli tanks enter southern part of Gaza Strip

Palestinian Territories – AFP

Dozens of Israeli tanks entered the southern part of the Gaza Strip near Khan Yunis on Monday, witnesses told AFP.

Dozens of Israeli tanks as well as armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers entered the south of the territory near the city of Khan Yunis, which is crowded with internally displaced Palestinians, witnesses told AFP.

Amin Abu Hawli, 59, said the Israeli vehicles were “two kilometres (1.2 miles) inside” the Palestinian territory in the village of Al-Qarara near Khan Yunis.

Moaz Mohammed, 34, said Israeli tanks were on the southern part of Salah al-Din road which runs from the north to the south of the strip.

“They are holding Salah al-Din road on both sides and are now cutting it between Deir al-Balah (in central Gaza) and Khan Yunis, firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area,” he said.

In its latest estimate, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said around 1.8 million people in Gaza, roughly 75 percent of the population, had been displaced, many to overcrowded and unsanitary shelters.

Many people have been forced to flee to the south of the Gaza Strip and fear being pushed towards the border with Egypt.

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus said on Monday that Israel was not “trying to displace anyone”.

“We are not trying to move anybody from anywhere permanently,” he said.

Many Palestinians fear a repeat of the displacement of 760,000 Palestinians that took place during the war that led to Israel’s creation 75 years ago.

Weeks after Israel sent ground forces and tanks into northern Gaza, the army has been air-dropping leaflets in the besieged territory’s south, especially around Khan Yunis, telling Palestinians there to flee to other areas.

The army “continues to expand its ground operation against main Hamas fronts in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said Sunday. “Wherever there is a Hamas stronghold, the IDF operates.”

Air strikes have since intensified in Gaza’s south, said James Elder, a spokesman for the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.

“Despite what has been assured, attacks in the south of Gaza are every bit as vicious as what the north endured,” he posted Monday on X, formerly Twitter.

Israel’s military said Sunday it had carried out around 10,000 air strikes in total.

The Gaza health ministry says Israel has killed more than 15,500 people, about 70 percent of them women and children — a death toll that has sparked global alarm and mass demonstrations.

The government in Gaza and the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said a strike had hit the entrance of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of the territory late Sunday.

Several people were killed in the strike, the news agency said, while Hamas accused Israel on Telegram of a “grave violation” of humanitarian law.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the alleged strike.

Nine-year-old Huda, who was wounded in the head, arrived at the Deir al-Balah hospital with an International Committee of the Red Cross convoy bringing casualties from northern Gaza.

“She doesn’t answer me any more,” her father Abdelkarim Abu Warda said, sobbing.

– Red Sea drones –

With the focus of the war on Gaza, the West Bank has also seen an uptick in violence since October.

According to Wafa, Israeli troops conducted on Monday a raid into the occupied West Bank city of Jenin and neighbouring villages, with clashes erupting as the soldiers went in.

With fears of a wider regional conflagration rising, a US destroyer shot down multiple drones over the Red Sea while assisting commercial ships in the Red Sea on Sunday, according to the US Central Command.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels — who said they targeted two of the ships — launched a series of drones and missiles towards Israel in recent weeks and seized a cargo vessel last month, but the latest attacks mark a significant escalation in the threat to shipping in the area.

In Iraq, an air strike killed at least five pro-Iranian militants on Sunday, according to Iraqi security sources, a day after Baghdad warned Washington against “attacks” on its territory.