Extract from ABC News
Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into an already crowded town at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days, according to the United Nations, fleeing Israel's bombardment of the centre of the strip, where hospital officials said dozens were killed on Friday.
Israel's unprecedented air and ground offensive against Hamas has displaced some 85 per cent of the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people to seek shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed. That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.
Israel's widening campaign, which has already flattened much of the north, is now focused on the urban refugee camps of Bureij, Nuseirat and Maghazi in central Gaza, where Israeli warplanes and artillery have levelled buildings.
But fighting has not abated in the north, nor in the city of Khan Younis in the south, where Israel believes Hamas leaders are hiding. Militants have continued to fire rockets, mostly at Israel's south.
Here are some of the latest developments:
- Dozens killed around hospital in Khan Younis
- UN says Israel hit aid convoy
- A stream of displaced people
- Strikes in central Gaza
- Israel reviews strike on refugee camp
Dozens killed around hospital in Khan Younis
Israeli shelling over two days near Al-Amal hospital in southern Gaza's main city Khan Younis killed 41 people, the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Thursday.
The casualties include "displaced persons seeking shelter" at Red Crescent premises, it said.
The Gaza health ministry said on Friday that 187 people had been killed across Gaza over the past 24 hours.
The Israeli army also announced the death of one of its soldiers in Gaza, bringing the number of troops killed during the war inside the Palestinian territory to 168.
UN says Israel hit aid convoy
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Friday that an aid convoy came under fire from the Israeli military, without suffering any casualties.
"Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli army," UNRWA's director in Gaza, Tom White, wrote on social media platform X.
"Our international convoy leader and his team were not injured, but one vehicle sustained damage."
The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident.
A stream of displaced people
The UN said late on Thursday that around 100,000 people had arrived in Rafah, along the border with Egypt, in recent days. The influx crams even more people into one of Gaza's most densely populated areas.
People arrived in trucks, in carts and on foot. Those who haven't found space in the already overwhelmed shelters have built tents on the roadsides.
"People are using any empty space to build shacks," said UNRWA's Juliette Touma. "Some are sleeping in their cars, and others are sleeping in the open."
Israel has told residents of central Gaza to head south, but even as the displaced have poured in, Rafah has not been spared.
A strike on Thursday evening destroyed a residential building, killing at least 23 people, according to the media office of the nearby Al-Kuwaiti Hospital.
At the hospital, residents rushed in a baby whose face was flecked with dust and who wailed as doctors tore open a Mickey Mouse onesie to check for injuries.
Shorouq Abu Oun fled the fighting in northern Gaza a month ago and sheltered at her sister's house, which was located near Thursday's strike.
"We were displaced from the north and came here as they [the Israeli military] said it is safe," said Abu Oun, speaking at the hospital where the dead and wounded were taken.
"I wish we were martyred there [in northern Gaza] and didn't come here."
Strikes in central Gaza
Residents said on Friday that many houses were hit overnight in the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps, and that heavy fighting took place in Bureij in central Gaza. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah said it received the bodies of 40 people, including 28 women, who were killed in strikes.
"They are hitting everywhere," said Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian man from Nuseirat. "Families are killed inside their homes and the streets. They are killed everywhere."
Israel said this week that it was expanding its ground offensive into central Gaza, targeting a belt of crowded neighbourhoods that were built to house some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation.
Israel blames the high death toll on Hamas, which it accuses of embedding inside the civilian population. It says Israeli forces have uncovered weapons troves and underground tunnel shafts in residential buildings, schools and mosques.
But even Israel's closest ally, the United States, has urged it to take more precautions to spare civilians and allow in more aid.
Israel says it warns civilians to leave areas that it is targeting in multiple ways, and that it has worked to be more precise in its evacuation orders.
Israel reviews strike on refugee camp
On Sunday, an Israeli strike on the Maghazi camp killed at least 106 people, according to hospital records.
In a preliminary review of the strike, the Israeli military said buildings near the target had also been hit, and that "likely caused unintended harm to additional uninvolved civilians".
In a statement, the military said it regretted the harm to civilians and said it would learn from the incident.
Eylon Levy, a government spokesman, told Britain's Sky News that the wrong munition was used in the strike, leading to "a regrettable mistake".
"This should not have happened," he said.
Israel seldom comments on specific strikes, and has rarely acknowledged any fault even when civilians are killed.
AP/AFP
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