Thousands of displaced Gazans forced to move again as Israeli tanks push further into Rafah

Israeli forces pressed their incursion deeper into two northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip yesterday, and Palestinian health officials said tank shelling in Rafah killed at least 11 people.

Residents and Hamas media said tanks advanced further west into the Shakoush neighbourhood of Rafah, forcing thousands of displaced people there to leave their tent camps and head northward to the nearby Khan Younis.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

Since May 7, tanks have advanced in several districts of Rafah, and forces remained in control of the entire border line with Egypt and the Rafah crossing, the only gateway for most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people with the outside world.

One resident said some bulldozers in the Shakoush area were piling up sand for Israeli tanks to station behind.

“Some families live in the area of the raid and are now besieged by the occupation forces,” he told Reuters.

“The situation there is very dangerous and many families are leaving towards Khan Younis, even from the Mawasi area as things became unsafe for them,” said the man, who moved northward overnight.

More than eight months into Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza triggered by the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7, the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to stage attacks on Israeli forces operating in areas over which the army said it had gained control months ago. The Palestinian groups sometimes still fire rockets into Israeli territory.

In a yard at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, mourners gathered with 10-year-old Belal Abu Hassanein, whose mother and brother were killed in an air strike that hit their house.

“I went to check out our rooftop, they struck us, I was bombed – I flew off the rooftop and fell,” said Belal, who was laid on a hospital stretcher after being wounded in the attack.

“My grandfather started screaming... He was telling us that there was a hit at our place. When I heard the word hit, I went to check the room in which I was sleeping,” he said. “I found that my mother and brother had been martyred.”

Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the US, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire. Hamas says any deal must end the war and bring full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is eradicated.

When Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel last October they killed around 1,200 people and seized more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. The Israeli offensive in retaliation has so far killed more than 37,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, and has left the tiny, heavily built-up coastal enclave in ruins.

In parallel, Israeli forces continued their new raid into the Shejaia neighbourhood in the northern Gaza Strip, into which tanks advanced on Thursday prompting heavy fighting with Hamas-led militants.

Medics said earlier that several Palestinians have been killed or wounded in Israeli bombardment and that medical teams have been unable to reach all casualties because of the military offensive.

The Israeli military said forces were conducting “targeted” raids in Shejaia, adding that the air force struck dozens of Hamas military targets in the area.

It said that one Hamas militant, who was operating from a humanitarian-designated area, was killed in a strike it launched in the Deir Al-Balah area in central Gaza. It said measures were taken to ensure no harm to civilians, accusing Hamas of systematically using Palestinian civilians as shields. Hamas denies that.

US officials said yesterday the pier built by the US military to bring aid to Gaza has been removed due to weather to protect it, and the US is considering not re-installing it unless the aid begins flowing out into the population again.

While the military has helped deliver desperately needed food through the pier, the vast majority of it is still sitting in the adjacent storage yard and that area is almost full. Aid agencies have had difficulty moving the food to areas further into Gaza where it is most needed because the humanitarian convoys have come under attack.

The UN, which has the widest reach in delivering aid to starving Palestinians, hasn’t been distributing food and other emergency supplies arriving through the pier since June 9. The pause came after the Israeli military used an area near the pier to fly out hostages after their rescue in a raid that killed more than 270 Palestinians, prompting a UN security review over concerns that aid workers’ safety and neutrality may have been compromised.

While always meant to be temporary, president Joe Biden’s $230m project has faced a series of setbacks since aid first rolled ashore on May 17 and has been criticised by relief groups and congressional Republicans as a costly distraction.

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