Fresh wave of airstrikes unleashed near Gaza refugees

World Health Organisation chief calls for ‘urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril’ facing the besieged Palestinians.

An Israeli soldier crouches on an armoured personnel carrier near the Israel-Gaza border in southern Israel on Thursday. Picture: Reuters

Israeli forces on Thursday battled Hamas in Gaza, where airstrikes and urban combat rocked the southern city of Khan Yunis, near where many hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.

UN World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for “urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril” facing besieged Gaza’s people, including “terrible injuries, acute hunger and … severe risk of disease”.

Victims of an Israeli strike outside the Kuwait hospital in Rafah on Thursday. Picture: AFP

The war, which started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, has left much of northern Gaza in ruins while the battlefront has shifted ever further to the south of the besieged territory.

The Israeli army said it had deployed an additional brigade to Khan Yunis, home town of Hamas’s Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, where Agence France-Presse correspondents reported sustained air and artillery strikes.

Medics take charge of a wounded child at Kuwait hospital in Rafah. Picture: AFP

The Palestinian Red Crescent society reported that shelling had killed at least 10 people near the city’s Al-Amal hospital, an area where it said about 14,000 people are sheltering.

Later on Thursday, Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry said 20 people were killed, mostly women and children, and dozens wounded in shelling of the Shaboura camp in the southern city of Rafah.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack that left about 1140 dead, mostly civilians. Hamas on October 7 also took about 240 hostages, more than half of whom remain captive – a source of intense anxiety for their families, who protested in Jerusalem, demanding “bring them home”.

An Israeli self-propelled howitzer fires across the Gaza border. Picture: AFP

Israel’s relentless aerial bombardments and ground invasion have killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the ministry, on Thursday reported an additional 200 deaths in strikes, “including entire families”, over the past 24 hours.

The Israeli army says 167 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza. In total, the army said, more than 500 soldiers had been killed since October 7, including in the Hamas attack and the battle to retake control of southern Israel, inside Gaza, and in cross-border hostilities with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

More than 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been driven from their homes, the UN says, and many now live in cramped shelters or makeshift tents in the far south, around Rafah, near Egypt.

Israeli youth, led by Israeli Scouts from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, protest for the release of hostages held in Gaza on Thursday in Jerusalem. Picture: Getty Images

In the central al-Maghazi refugee camp, which was targeted on Sunday by a strike that killed at least 70 people, resident Waleed Mohammed Aeid voiced his pain and frustration.

“They told us to go to Rafah, but we don’t want to,” he said. “Why? To go live in the streets there? All the neighbourhood here was evacuated. They bombed the school, but we didn’t leave because we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

An Israeli siege imposed after October 7, following years of a crippling blockade, has deprived Gazans of food, water, fuel and medicine. The severe shortages have been only sporadically eased by humanitarian aid convoys entering primarily via Egypt.

Israel said on Thursday it had given preliminary approval to the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus for a “maritime lifeline” to ship aid to Gaza. “There’s a basic authorisation to use this route, but there are still some logistical problems that are waiting to be solved,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat.

Violence has also flared across the Israel-occupied West Bank, with at least 314 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Israeli forces overnight Thursday raided money exchange shops across the West Bank that the military said had provided funds for armed groups.

AFP