Israeli forces bombarded Palestinian refugee camps in central Gaza and issued orders telling residents to evacuate the area Tuesday, signs that the military plans to expand its ground offensive into another section of the besieged territory. Gaza’s main telecom provider, Paltel, announced another “complete interruption” of services.
The opening of a potential new battle zone threatens to bring new destruction and displacement in a war that Israel has said will last for months as it vows to crush the ruling Hamas militant group after its Oct. 7 attack. Israeli forces have been engaged in heavy urban fighting in northern Gaza and in the southern city of Khan Younis, driving Palestinians into ever-smaller areas in search of refuge.
Despite international pressure for a cease-fire and U.S. calls for a reduction in civilian casualties, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the fight “isn’t close to finished.”
Israel’s offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, whose count doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. On Tuesday afternoon, it said 240 people had been killed over the past 24 hours.
“We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces, which has claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve,” the U.N. human rights office said, noting that Israel had ordered some residents to move to central Gaza.
Meanwhile, there were new signs of the war inflaming regional tensions. A watchdog said an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed an Iranian general, bringing vows of revenge. U.S. warplanes hit Iranian-backed militias in Iraq that had carried out a drone strike that wounded American soldiers.
Residents of central Gaza described a night of shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps. The camps are built-up towns housing Palestinians driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war and their descendants. They are now crowded with people who fled the north.
“The bombing was very intense,” Radwan Abu Sheitta, a teacher, said by phone from Bureij. “It seems they are approaching,” he said of Israeli troops.
In the afternoon, the Israeli military issued an order calling on residents to evacuate a belt of territory the width of central Gaza, including Bureij, urging them to move to nearby Deir al-Balah. Hamas’ military arm, the Qassam Brigades, said its fighters struck two Israeli tanks east of Bureij. Its report couldn’t be independently confirmed, but it suggested Israeli forces were moving toward the camp.
REGIONAL SPILLOVER
Throughout the war, Iranian-backed militia groups around the region have stepped up attacks in support of Hamas. All sides so far have appeared to calibrate the violence to stay short of sparking an all-out conflict.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel faces a “multi-arena war” from seven different fronts — Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. “We have responded and acted already on six of these fronts,” he told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq carried out a drone strike on a U.S. base in Irbil in northern Iraq on Monday, wounding three American servicemembers, one critically, according to U.S. officials. Militias have carried out more than 100 attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.
In response, U.S. warplanes before dawn hit three locations in Iraq connected to a main militia, Kataib Hezbollah.
The Israeli strike on Monday hit a neighborhood of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing Gen. Seyed Razi Mousavi, an adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel’s military didn’t comment.
Almost daily, Hezbollah and Israel exchange volleys of missiles, airstrikes and shelling across the Israeli-Lebanese border. Around 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, mostly fighters from Hezbollah and other groups, but also 17 civilians. At least nine soldiers and four civilians have been killed on the Israeli side.
In the Red Sea, attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen against commercial ships have disrupted trade and prompted a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping routes.
EXPANDING GAZA OFFENSIVE
An Israeli move into central Gaza further shrinks the area into which Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forced to squeeze. Already more than 85% of the population has been driven from their homes.
Deir al-Balah and Rafah, in the far south on the Egyptian border, have been overwhelmed with displaced people, even as Israel bombards them.
U.N. officials say a quarter of Gaza’s population is starving under Israel’s siege, which allows in only a trickle of food, water, fuel, medicine and other supplies.
A strike Tuesday hit a family home in Mawasi, a rural area in the province of Khan Younis on Gaza’s southern coastline that Israel declared a safe zone. One woman was killed and at least eight others were wounded, according to a cameraman working for The Associated Press at the nearby hospital. There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military.
The U.N. Security Council last week called for immediately speeding up aid deliveries to Gaza. But there has been little concrete sign of a change. The U.N. says it struggles to distribute aid because many areas are cut off by fighting.
Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas’ military and governing capabilities in Gaza after the militants’ shock attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 240 hostage. Israel says it aims to free the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity.
Israel blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll in Gaza, citing the militants’ use of crowded residential areas and tunnels. Israel also says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, without presenting evidence.
Israeli troops have been engaged in nearly two months of ground combat with Hamas and other militants in northern Gaza and weeks of urban fighting in Khan Younis. Battles and bombardment have destroyed large swaths of both areas.
In the north, troops are focusing on the Gaza City neighborhood of Daraj Tufah, believed to be one of Hamas’ last strongholds in the area, according to reports from Israeli military correspondents, who receive briefings from army commanders.
The reports said the army is aiming to destroy an estimated 70% of Hamas infrastructure, leaving the remainder for further operations during lower intensity phases of fighting.
Still, Hamas fighters have shown resilience. The Israeli military announced the deaths of two more soldiers, bringing the total killed in the ground offensive to 158.
