FIGHTING RAGES
AFP correspondents reported Friday that Israeli strikes had hit the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah as well as parts of central Gaza.
The Israeli army said its forces had “struck over 100 targets” across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites and weapons depots.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said it had recorded 162 deaths over the same period.
A fighter jet bombed the central area of Bureij overnight, killing “an armed terrorist cell”, the army said, after what it described as an attempted attack on an Israeli tank.
And a number of Palestinian militants were killed in clashes in Khan Younis, a city that has become a major battleground, the army said.
Troops also uncovered tunnels under the Blue Beach Hotel in northern Gaza which had been used “by terrorists as shelter from where they planned and executed attacks”, according to the army.
AFPTV footage on Friday showed entire families, seeking safety from the violence, arriving in Rafah in overloaded cars and on foot, pushing handcarts stacked with possessions.
“We fled Jabalia camp to Maan (in Khan Younis) and now we are fleeing from Maan to Rafah,” said one woman who declined to give her name. “(We have) no water, no electricity and no food.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported renewed shelling and drone fire in the area around Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis after seven displaced people, including a five-day-old baby, were killed while sheltering in the compound.
“We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe due to the spread of epidemics, with the hospital overcrowded with displaced people,” said a spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza.
Source: CNA
