GAZA: Heavy battles and bombardment hit Gaza City's Shujaiya district for a fourth day on Sunday, months after the Israeli army declared Palestinian groups command structure dismantled in the northern area.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the devastated neighbourhood, where the army said it has fought Palestinian groups both "above and below ground" in tunnels.
The military said troops had located weapons and conducted targeted raids on trapped combat compounds" over the past 24 hours while the air force had "struck dozens" of the infrastructure sites.
It also reported clashes in central Gaza and the southern Rafah area, a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the "intense phase" of the war raging since October 7 was nearing an end.
The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that "60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced" from Shujaiya since new fighting broke out there on Thursday.
The war started with October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, based on Israeli figures. The Palestinian groups seized 251 captives, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,877 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Gaza.
Six more people were killed in an air strike at dawn targeting a family house in Rafah, said medics at Nasser Hospital where the bodies were taken.
Artillery shelling also struck southern areas of Rafah city, witnesses said.
United Nations and other relief agencies have voiced alarm over the dire humanitarian crisis and threat of starvation the war and Israeli siege have brought for Gaza's 2.4 million people.
"It's really unbearable," said Louise Wateridge from UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, speaking Friday after returning to the city of Khan Yunis.
"Everything is rubble," she said. "And yet people are living there again... There's no water there, there's no sanitation, there's no food. And now, people are living back in these buildings that are empty shells."
In Israel, thousands of protesters again took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday night, demanding greater efforts to return the remaining captives, and calling for early elections.
The Gaza conflict has also led to soaring tensions on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, where the army has traded cross-border fire with the Hezbollah movement since October.
Israel's military said this month that its plans for a Lebanon offensive had been "approved and validated", prompting Hezbollah to respond that no part of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict. — AFP
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