Gaza:

Street fighting broke out in Gaza City and Hamas fighters used tunnels to ambush Israeli forces, as the United States said Palestinians should rule Gaza after the war, responding to Israeli comments. He said he would control security indefinitely.

Palestinian officials said 10,569 people had been killed as of Wednesday, 40% of them children. Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed, although the number is likely higher.

The Israeli army claimed its troops had advanced into “the center of Gaza city”, Hamas’ main stronghold and the coastal enclave’s largest city, while the resistance group said its fighters had inflicted heavy losses on the attacking forces.

Hamas’s armed wing said it had killed a far greater number of Israeli soldiers than the military had announced, and destroyed dozens of tanks, bulldozers and other vehicles. It released footage of fighter planes firing anti-tank rockets and directly attacking vehicles.

According to sources in Hamas and the separate Islamic Jihad resistance group, Israeli tanks have faced heavy resistance from Hamas fighters using underground tunnels to ambush them.,

nowhere to run

Thousands of Palestinians have taken shelter at Al Shifa hospital inside Gaza City, despite Israeli orders to evacuate the besieged area. They are taking shelter in tents on the hospital grounds and say they have nowhere else to go.

UN humanitarian office OCHA said Israeli forces had asked residents of the north to again move to the south and opened the four-hour corridor for the fifth consecutive day.

It said clashes and shelling continued around the main road, endangering the evacuation. It said bodies were lying on the side of the road, while most of the evacuees were walking on foot because Israeli forces had asked them to abandon vehicles on the southern edge of Gaza City.

A large number of displaced people, out of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, are already trapped in schools, hospitals and other locations in the south.

Although fighting is concentrated in the north, southern areas also come under regular attack. In Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis early Thursday, residents picked through the rubble and twisted debris of a building destroyed by Israeli air strikes, hoping to find survivors, witnesses said.

The World Health Organization said, “Deaths and injuries are increasing in Gaza due to intensifying hostilities, intense overcrowding, and disrupted health, water and sanitation systems pose an additional threat: the rapid spread of infectious diseases.”

Palestinian led government

As the conflict in Gaza and the subsequent siege enters its second month, Washington has begun discussions with Israeli and Arab leaders on the future of the Gaza Strip without Hamas rule.

While a plan has not yet been revealed, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined Washington’s expectations for the besieged coastal region.

“There will be no recapture of Gaza after the conflict ends. There will be no attempt to blockade or encircle Gaza. There will be no reduction in Gaza’s territory,” Blinken said at a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.

Blinken said an end to the conflict may require “some transition period” but that post-crisis governance should include “Palestinian-led governance and unifying Gaza with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News that Israel would have security responsibility for the enclave “indefinitely” after the war.

Israeli officials have since tried to make clear that they do not intend to annex Gaza after the war, but have not yet explained how they can ensure security without maintaining a military presence. Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, says Gaza, where Hamas has ruled since 2007, is an imagined future Palestinian state. Is an integral part.

Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s leadership, told the New York Times that the group’s attack on Israel was intended to break the status quo and open a new chapter in its fight against Israel.

“We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue on the table again, and now no one in the region experiences peace,” he said, according to the newspaper on Wednesday.

Exiled Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri told Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV on Wednesday that its fighters are determined to inflict damage on Israeli forces in the ground battle in Gaza. “The more (Israel) expands and expands on the ground, the deeper its damage will be,” he said.

A clip of Hamas video released on Wednesday shows fighters in Gaza running past a pile of debris and stopping to fire anti-tank ammunition at Israeli tanks. Another showed them firing rifles from behind buildings and garbage bins.

Israeli soldiers are taking action amid the ongoing ground attack on Gaza. Photo: Reuters

Israel discovers tunnels

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the chief Israeli military spokesman, claimed on Wednesday that “Hamas has lost control in the north” of Gaza.

Israeli combat engineers were using explosive devices to destroy Hamas’ tunnel network stretching hundreds of kilometers (miles) beneath Gaza, he said. The Israeli army claimed to have destroyed 130 tunnel shafts so far.

Israeli soldiers escorted foreign journalists to the edges of Gaza City on Wednesday. Journalists saw a devastated landscape where every building in sight was scarred by war.

Walls were blown away, while bullets and shrapnel shattered walls and palm trees were torn to pieces and broken.

Lieutenant Colonel Ido, deputy commander of the 401st Brigade, who did not give his last name, claimed that by the time Israeli soldiers reached the buildings, all the families had left.

He said, “So we know that everyone here is our enemy. We have not seen any civilians here. Only Hamas.”

Soldiers on the press tour said that beneath the family’s apartment were two floors of workshops used to make weapons, including drones found in five wooden boxes. It was not possible to verify the claim.

50,000 evicted Palestinians head south

Nearly 50,000 Palestinian civilians were forcibly evicted to the north on Wednesday, during a four-hour ‘window of opportunity’ declared by Israel.

An Israeli military vehicle performing maneuvers during the ongoing ground offensive on the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters

The Israeli military has repeatedly told residents to evacuate the north or risk being caught up in the violence. At least 19 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house near a hospital in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Wednesday, the enclave’s interior ministry said.

There was no immediate Israeli comment or details on the reported attack, which if confirmed would be the third attack on Gaza’s largest refugee camp in a week.

UN officials and G7 world powers have stepped up appeals for a humanitarian end to the war to help civilians in Gaza, where essential needs including food, medicine and fuel are running out.

The talks, brokered by Qatar, where many of Hamas’ political leaders are based, are aimed at securing the release of 10 to 15 hostages in exchange for a one- to two-day humanitarian pause in Gaza, a source briefed on the talks said on Wednesday. trying.