Israel Launches Intensest Attacks on Gaza Since Ceasefire End with House-to-House Fighting

The Israeli army has launched the most intense attacks on Gaza "by land, sea and air" since the end of the ceasefire on December 1. In the last 24 hours, more than 450 targets have been hit, the highest number announced by the Armed Forces since fighting resumed, a military spokesman said Friday morning. In the town of Khan Younis, considered Hamas' main stronghold in the southern Gaza Strip, infantry are fighting "hole by hole and house by house," a reference to the Palestinian militants' tunnel system, according to a video recorded on the ground with background fire by Gen. Dan Goldfuss of the 98th Brigade.

The high commissioner of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has warned in a letter he has sent to the General Assembly that, if there is no shelter and humanitarian aid does not arrive, "civilians in Gaza are at risk of dying or will be forced to leave for Egypt", while calling for a new ceasefire.

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Israel-Gaza war, live

The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to more than 17,000, with 350 new victims on Friday, and 1,900 wounded in the last few hours, according to health authorities in the enclave, whose government is in the hands of Hamas. They have specified, however, that they do not have enough capacity to know the exact number of people who are in the rubble of bombed homes and buildings. Intensive care units in hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip are at 250 percent capacity and are demanding help, mainly medical supplies, to treat patients with fractures and burns, according to the same source.

It is in the same southern area that the bulk of 70 per cent of the 2.3 million inhabitants displaced by the conflict continue to be concentrated. They are the main victims of the humanitarian crisis that is increasingly worrying the international community in the midst of the blockade to prevent the necessary aid from entering the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave. UNRWA has announced that it is not capable of carrying out its work under these conditions, as Lazzarini expresses in his letter, dated Thursday. "UNRWA's ability to continue to carry out its mandate in Gaza has become very limited. With the constant shelling, the scarce and irregular flow of food and other humanitarian supplies into the Strip, compared to the immense needs of displaced people in our overcrowded shelters and beyond, UNRWA's ability to help and protect people is rapidly shrinking."

The agency, according to its chief executive, welcomes 1.2 million people to its facilities and is the main platform from which aid is distributed to 2.2 million. The situation keeps them on the verge of "collapse" but they continue to keep staff in shelters and health centres, and they also care for traumatised families who arrive even with their dead children. All this despite the fact that they have lost 130 employees in the bombings, some with their families, and 70% of their own workers suffer the rigor of forced displacement and food shortages. "If UNRWA collapses, humanitarian assistance in Gaza collapses," says Lazzarini, who remembers not having experienced anything like this in his 35 years dedicated to emergencies.

Clashes between soldiers and militants are taking place in Khan Younis, between infrastructures such as schools and mosques, from where Hamas members are fighting or hiding and are sometimes "eliminated" while trying to escape through the tunnels, according to an army statement. The clashes are taking place both in open areas and in the very heart of this town, which had a pre-war population of 200,000 and which, with the vast majority of Gazans displaced by the fighting, had doubled its population. The homes of Hamas officials are also military targets, and weapons and intelligence material have been found in some of them, according to the Israeli military.

Rows of half-naked men arrested

Meanwhile, images, photos and videos of dozens of half-naked men on the streets of Gaza detained by Israeli soldiers have continued to make a huge impact since they began to come to light on Thursday. A senior Hamas official in Egypt on Friday accused Israel of committing a "heinous crime against innocent civilians." The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for its part, reacted by calling for respect for humanitarian law. "We stress the importance of treating all detainees humanely and with dignity, in accordance with humanitarian standards," spokeswoman Jessica Moussan said in a statement.

Sources from Al Araby confirmed that among them is reporter Diaa Al Kahlout, who works for its associated daily Al Araby Al Jadeed and who was detained along with brothers and cousins, according to his family to the Qatar-based Arabic-language network. The Committee to Protect Journalists – which warned of his arrest on Wednesday in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza – has called for his release in a statement. Other people have warned of relatives who appear in the images who do not belong to Hamas or Palestinian armed groups, reports Reuters.

The Israeli authorities, for their part, justified the operation by referring to people who were in areas of northern Gaza that they had ordered evacuated weeks ago, such as the Jabalia refugee camp or the Shujayia neighborhood, considered by Israel to be "Hamas strongholds and centers of gravity," according to spokesman Eylon Levy.

In previous days, Palestinian detainees, also handcuffed and blindfolded, had already been seen being transported through Israeli territory aboard military vehicles, according to photos by Agence France Presse. On Wednesday, a group of journalists was able to see one of these groups in the vicinity of Kibbutz Nir Oz, less than five kilometers from Khan Younis.

"To demand an end to the annihilation of Gaza and its people is not to deny the atrocities of October 7," Lazzarini adds in the letter, in a clear message to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose confrontation with the UN has worsened in recent hours. The High Commissioner includes in the text the invocation of Article 99 of the Charter of the United Nations to which the Secretary-General, António Guterres, resorted, whose resignation Israel continues to demand.

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