Fierce street-by-street combat rages in Gaza City

Palestinian Territories – AFP

Israeli troops and Hamas fighters were locked in heavy, close quarters fighting in Gaza City on Thursday, including a 10-hour battle that Israel said toppled one of the Palestinians’ “strongholds”.
Hamas fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and assault rifles were clashing with Israeli soldiers backed by armoured vehicles in the ruins of the besieged territory’s north.
Broken palm trees, mangled road signs and twisted lampposts marked the remains of what was once north Gaza’s main arterial route, an AFP journalist saw while embedded with Israeli troops on a controlled visit.
Israeli flags were flying over buildings at beach resorts in northern Gaza and there was little sign of any human presence amid the destruction as hundreds of thousands have fled a dire humanitarian situation.

– Stronghold and tunnels –

The Israeli military said its forces secured a Hamas “military stronghold” in western Jabalia area in the past day, adding the troops had “finished securing the compound after 10 hours of combat”.
The battle raged above and below ground, it said, exposing some of Hamas’s extensive network of tunnel and subterranean bases that form a significant element of its capacity to fight.
Israel said dozens of Hamas fighters were killed, while adding the overall death toll for Israel’s troops in the ground offensive had risen to 34.
The intense combat and the densely populated coastal territory being effectively sealed off have led to increasingly dire conditions for civilians.
Tom Potokar, chief surgeon at the International Committee of the Red Cross, described the scene at the European hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza as “catastrophic”.
“In the last 24 hours, I’ve seen three patients with maggots in their wounds,” Potokar told AFP.
A rare delivery of emergency medical supplies reached Gaza City’s main Al-Shifa hospital on Wednesday, just the second since the war began, the UN and World Health Organization said, warning it “far from sufficient to respond to the immense needs”.