Israeli forces and Hamas are fighting house-to-house battles along the length of the Gaza Strip, with devastating consequences for the civilian population amid a complete collapse in humanitarian relief.
As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been fighting their way through badly bomb-damaged urban areas in northern and southern Gaza, Hamas has increasingly relied on improvised bombs to inflict casualties and slow down the assault.
Gaza’s hospitals have reported a flood of civilian dead and injured, many of them women and children, as medical supplies dwindle, while the spread of ground combat to the south has stopped any delivery of humanitarian aid much further than the Rafah crossing point with Egypt.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said 1,207 Palestinians had been killed since the collapse of a temporary ceasefire at the beginning of the month, and that 70% of the dead were women and children.
The focal points of the fighting over the past two days have been the Jabalia refugee camp and the Shuja’iyya district in northern Gaza and Khan Younis and Bani Suheila in the south.
Credit: theguardian.com
