GAZA: Palestinians huddling under bombardment in Gaza said on Monday in a new Israeli assault at the enclave's edge.
Israel has pressed on with its offensive in some of the war's most intense combat, and threatened a new ground assault on Rafah, a small city where more than half of Gaza's people are now penned against the enclave's southern border Egypt, mainly sleeping rough in makeshift tents.
"We want the war to end and we want to go back home, this is all that we want at this stage," said Yamen Hamad, 35, a father of four reached by messaging app at a UN school in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The area is one of the few where Israeli tanks have yet to advance and is now jammed with tens of thousands of displaced families.
In one of the biggest battles of the war, Israeli tanks have been advancing for the past two weeks in Khan Younis, the main southern city, which was already housing hundreds of thousands of people who fled other areas. Fighting has also resurged in Gaza City in the north of the Strip, in areas Israel claimed to have subdued in the first two months of the war.
The Israeli military said on Monday its forces had killed dozens of Palestinian fighters in combat in areas in northern, central and southern Gaza over the last 24 hours.
Palestinians described heavy fighting in Gaza City, particularly its western areas close to the Mediterranean shore, which had come under bombardment from Israeli warships.
Palestinian health officials said they had recovered the bodies of 14 people killed in a strike on Khan Younis overnight. They have said repeatedly in recent days that rescuers are unable to reach many of the dead and wounded in the city.
Gaza authorities say more than 27,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Israel's assault, with thousands more dead feared unrecovered in the rubble. Israel says it has lost 226 soldiers in Gaza fighting, since the attacks on October 7.
After Israel announced last week that it was preparing for a potential ground assault on Rafah, international aid agencies and the UN said they feared the humanitarian consequences would be catastrophic, with no place left for residents to flee.
Gazans fear that a thrust into Rafah would drive them out of the enclave once and for all, into Egypt which rejects any attempt to force them across.
An Israeli official said that the military would coordinate with Egypt, and seek ways of evacuating most of the displaced people northward, ahead of any Rafah ground sweep. — Reuters
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