2023-10-16 06:42:02
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than a million people have fled their homes in the besieged Gaza Strip in the past week ahead of a planned Israeli invasion to eliminate the Hamas leadership after its deadly attack. Food and water reserves are dwindling in the enclave and hospitals warn that they are on the brink of collapse.
Israeli forces, backed by a growing US naval deployment in the region and some 360,000 drafted reservists, were positioned along the Gaza border and rehearsing for what Israel described as a broad campaign to dismantle the armed group. Israel said it had already struck dozens of military targets, including command centers and rocket launchers, as well as killing several Hamas commanders.
Israeli authorities have not given a time frame for their land incursion, amid warnings from humanitarian groups that the offensive could aggravate the humanitarian crisis in the coastal enclave.
Airstrikes over the past week have destroyed entire neighborhoods, but have not stopped militant rocket fire into Israel.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported 2,670 Palestinians killed and 9,600 wounded since the fighting began, more than in the 2014 Gaza war, which lasted about six weeks. That makes it the deadliest of the five Gaza wars for both sides.
More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, the vast majority civilians killed in the Hamas attack on October 7. At least 155 others, including several children, were captured by Hamas and taken to Gaza, according to Israel. It is also the deadliest conflict for Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur war with Egypt and Syria.
Some 500,000 people, nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population, were taking refuge in United Nations schools and other facilities in the territory, where water supplies were running out, said Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. “Gaza is drying up,” she said. The agency estimates that one million people have been displaced in Gaza in just a week.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would return to Israel on Monday, according to the State Department, after completing a frenetic six-nation tour that took him through Arab nations to prevent the fighting from triggering a broader regional conflict.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, also considered traveling to Israel, although no plans had been finalized in this regard. In a televised interview Sunday night, Biden, who has reiterated his support for Israel, nevertheless said it would be a “big mistake” for the country to reoccupy Gaza.
Israel’s ambassadors to the United States and the United Nations said the same day that the country is not seeking an occupation. But Israel will do “whatever it takes to destroy (Hamas’s) capabilities,” UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan told CNN.
Clashes along the Israeli border with Lebanon since the war began intensified on Sunday. Hezbollah militants fired rockets and an anti-tank missile and Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery. The Israeli army also reported gunfire at one of its border posts. At least one person was killed on the Israeli side and several were injured on both sides.
An Israeli drone launched two missiles Sunday night on a hill west of the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Kila, according to the state-run National News Agency. No casualties were reported in the attacks, which hit a Lebanese military center.
Hezbollah said in a statement it had fired rockets at a military position in the northern border town of Shtula in retaliation for Israeli strikes that killed Archyde.com cameraman Issam Abdallah on Friday and two Lebanese civilians on Saturday. A militia spokeswoman said the increased fire was a “warning” and did not mean Hezbollah had decided to enter the war.
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Kullab reported from Baghdad. Nessman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem, Abby Sewell in Beirut and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.
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