Air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed a Hamas weapons maker and several fighters, the Israeli military said on Wednesday, as its air and ground offensive targeted the militants’ tunnel network beneath the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Gaza City, the Hamas militant group’s main stronghold in the territory, is encircled by Israeli forces. The military said troops have advanced to the heart of the densely-populated city while Hamas says its fighters have inflicted heavy losses.
Witnesses said thousands of people were leaving northern areas and heading south on a road controlled by Israeli tanks on Wednesday, during a daily four-hour window proclaimed by Israeli forces for civilians to leave.
Thousands of others still remain inside the encircled area, including at Gaza City’s main Al Shifa hospital, where Um Haitham Hejela was sheltering with her young children in an improvised tent.
“The situation is getting worse day after day,” she said. “There is no food, no water. When my son goes to pick up water, he queues for three or four hours in the line. They struck bakeries, we don’t have bread.”
With the war now entering its second month, UN officials and G7 nations stepped up appeals for a humanitarian pause in the hostilities to help alleviate the suffering in Gaza, where buildings have been flattened and basic supplies are running out. Palestinian officials say more than 10,000 people have been killed, 40 per cent of them children.
The level of death and suffering is “hard to fathom”, UN health agency spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said in Geneva.
Israel struck at Gaza in response to a Hamas raid on southern Israel on October 7 in which gunmen killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. The war has descended into the bloodiest episode in the generations-long Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Israel’s stated intention is to wipe out Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, pounding it from air, land, and sea while ground troops have moved in to divide the narrow coastal strip in two in fierce urban fighting amid the ruins of buildings.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday two separate strikes eliminated a leading Hamas armourer, Mahsein Abu Zina, and fighters engaged in anti-tank or ground-to-ground rocket fire.
Palestinian media reported clashes between militants and Israeli forces near al-Shati (Beach) refugee camp in Gaza City. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters had destroyed an Israeli tank in Gaza City.
There was no further word from Israel on the possible fate of Yahya Sinwar, the most senior Hamas leader in Gaza and believed to be a key planner of the Oct.7 attacks. Israel said on Tuesday he had been cornered in his bunker.
Chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said combat engineers were using explosive devices to destroy a tunnel network built by Hamas that stretches for hundreds of kilometers beneath Gaza.
Israeli tanks have met heavy resistance from Hamas fighters using the tunnels to stage ambushes, according to sources with Hamas and the separate Islamic Jihad militant group.
Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed.
Israelis have voiced fear that military operations could further endanger the hostages, who are believed to be held in the tunnels. Israel says it will not agree to a ceasefire until the hostages are released. Hamas says it will not stop fighting while Gaza is under attack.
“I challenge (Israel) if it has been able, to this moment, to record any military achievement on the ground other than killing civilians,” senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said.
