DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — Desperation grew Thursday among Palestinians largely cut off from supplies of food and water as Israeli forces engaged in fierce urban battles with Hamas militants. Strikes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah sowed fear in one of the last places where civilians could seek refuge.
United Nations officials say there are no safe places in the Gaza Strip nearly a week after Israel widened its offensive into the southern half of the territory. Heavy fighting in and around the city of Khan Yunis has displaced tens of thousands of people and cut most of Gaza off from aid deliveries. More than 80% of the territory’s population has already fled their homes.
Two months into the war, the grinding offensive has triggered renewed international alarm. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe†in Gaza. Arab and Islamic nations called for a vote Friday on a draft council resolution demanding a humanitarian cease-fire.
Guterres explicitly cited Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the secretary-general to bring to the council’s attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security. The authority has been used only a handful of times in the history of the world body.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, appears likely to block any U.N. effort to halt the fighting. Still, U.S. concern over the devastation was growing. Before the southern offensive, U.S. officials told Israel that it must limit civilian deaths and displacement, saying too many Palestinians were killed when its forces obliterated much of Gaza City and the north.
In a call with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said casualties are still too high, a senior State Department official said. Blinken told Dermer that Israel must also do more to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private diplomatic conversation.
The Palestinian cause — and hostility toward Israel — has shifted from the sidelines of student activism to a robust political movement at U.S. colleges.
Israel says it must crush Hamas’ military capabilities and remove it from power after the Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war.
In photos and video published Thursday, at least 100 Palestinian men are seen sitting in rows on a street in northern Gaza, stripped down to their underwear with their heads bowed as they are guarded by Israeli troops. The news outlet Al Araby Al Jadeed said its correspondent Diaa al Kahlout was among those detained and had been taken to an unknown location.
The images were the first showing such detentions in the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops have detained and interrogated hundreds of people in Gaza suspected of militant links.
In a sign of the growing desperation, thousands of Palestinians were packed together Thursday waiting to receive aid at a U.N. distribution center in the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah, the crowds becoming more frantic as their ranks swelled. Rami Ashour, one of those waiting, said he left when it seemed hopeless his turn would come to pick up a ration of flour.
Residents said the scene of chaos has become common in Deir al Balah, where a trickle of humanitarian aid is met by hordes of hungry and exhausted families sheltering in U.N. schools or with relatives. The World Food Program has warned of a “catastrophic hunger crisis.â€
“There are 8,000 people in this shelter, and any vegetables disappear before I see them because people seize everything so fast,†said Mazen Junaid, a father of six from northern Gaza.
Deir al Balah is trapped between ground fighting in northern Gaza and in Khan Yunis to the south, and it has continued to come under bombardment. An additional 115 bodies arrived at the town’s Aqsa Martyrs Hospital over the last 24 hours, the international aid group Doctors Without Borders said.
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“The hospital is full, the morgue is full,†the group said on X, formerly Twitter.
Only a few trucks have managed to reach central Gaza in recent days because fighting has largely prevented aid groups from distributing supplies beyond the area of Rafah, at Gaza’s far southern end by the Egypt border, the U.N. said. Meanwhile, entry of aid from Egypt has slowed.
Rafah is part of the rapidly shrinking area where civilians can seek shelter, and tens of thousands of people from Khan Yunis and other areas have inundated the town.
Normally home to about 280,000 people, Rafah was already hosting more than 470,000 displaced people. Shelters and homes have overflowed, and many people have been sleeping in tents or in the streets. Across Gaza, 1.87 million people — over 80% of the population of 2.3 million — have been driven from their homes.
Even in Rafah, safety has proved elusive. Several strikes hit the town late Wednesday and early Thursday, sending a wave of casualties streaming into a nearby hospital.
The military accused militants of firing rockets from open areas near Rafah. It released video of a strike Wednesday on what it said were launchers positioned outside the town and a few hundred yards from a U.N. warehouse.
Israel’s campaign has killed more than 17,100 people in Gaza — 70% of them women and children — and wounded more than 46,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says many others are trapped under rubble. The Hamas-run ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, Israel says, in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war and resulted in about 240 people in Israel being taken hostage. An estimated 138 hostages remain in Gaza, mostly soldiers and civilian men, after 105 were freed during a cease-fire in late November.
Troops have pushed into Khan Yunis, Gaza’s second-largest city, which Israeli officials have portrayed as Hamas’ center of gravity — something they previously said was in Gaza City and its Shifa Hospital.
In the afternoon, a strike in the center of Khan Yunis left a large field of rubble, and survivors said many people were believed buried underneath. Rescuers pulled bloodied women and children from the shells of gutted buildings.
The military said Thursday that it struck dozens of militant targets in Khan Yunis, including a tunnel shaft from which fighters had launched an attack.
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Heavy fighting was also still underway in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, even after two months of heavy bombardment and encirclement by ground troops. The military said troops raided a militant compound, killing a number of fighters and uncovering a network of tunnels.
The military said its forces were waging “close-quarter combat†with militants in the nearby northern Gaza district of Shajaiya, including militants found in a tunnel under a school. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
In the evening, a seven-story building in Gaza City’s Rimal district was leveled with dozens of people inside, but no ambulances arrived, because of the collapse of medical services in the north, a neighbor said.
Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas, accusing the militant group of using civilians as human shields in residential areas. But Israel has not given detailed accounts of its individual strikes, some of which have leveled entire city blocks.
President Biden is calling reports of rape and sexual violence by Hamas militants against Israelis “appalling.â€
Israel says about 5,000 militants have been killed, without saying how it arrived at that count. The military says 87 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive.
An antitank missile fired from Lebanon killed a man in northern Israel, the emergency services said. Hezbollah said its fighters attacked Israeli military posts along the border. Israel responded with intense strikes involving helicopters, tanks and artillery at the sources of the fire, the military said.
Hezbollah and other militants in Lebanon have been exchanging fire nearly daily with Israeli forces over the border. Visiting a northern base Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that if Hezbollah escalates to all-out war, Israel’s response will be to “turn Beirut and southern Lebanon … into Gaza and Khan Yunis.â€
Chehayeb reported from Beirut and Keath from Cairo. Associated Press correspondents Najib Jobain in Rafah, Matthew Lee in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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