Desperation grows among Palestinians as Hamas, Israel battle

By Wafaa Shurafa, Kareen Chehayeb and Lee Keath | Associated Press

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 Gaza nearly a week after Israel widened its offensive into the southern half of the territory. Heavy fighting in and around the city of Khan Younis 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 and urged members to demand a cease-fire.

Gutteres explicitly cited Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the secretary-general to bring to the council’s attention any matter which he believes threatens international peace and security. The power has only been used 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 it must limit civilian deaths and displacement, saying too many Palestinians were killed when it obliterated much of Gaza City and the north.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said casualties are still too high in a call with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, a senior State Department official said.

Blinken told Dermer that Israel must step up efforts to reduce casualties and do more to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the private diplomatic discussion, would not characterize Dermer’s response.

Israel says it must crush Hamas’ military capabilities and remove it from power following 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 being guarded by Israeli troops. The Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news outlet 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 Israeli-Hamas war. Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops have detained and interrogated hundreds of people in Gaza suspected of militant links.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS WORSENS

In a sign of the growing desperation, thousands of Palestinians were crushed together Thursday waiting to receive aid at a U.N. distribution center in Gaza’s central city of Deir al-Balah, the crowds growing more frantic as they swelled.

Residents said the scene of chaos had 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. Rami Ashour, one those waiting Thursday morning, said he left when it seemed hopeless his turn would come to pick up a ration of flour.

Deir al-Balah is trapped between ground fighting in northern Gaza and in Khan Younis to the south, but has continued to come under bombardment. Another 115 bodies arrived at the town’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital over the past 24 hours, the international aid group Doctors Without Borders said.

“The hospital is full, the morgue is full,” the group said on X, formerly known as 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.

Rafah is part of the rapidly shrinking area where civilians can seek shelter, and tens of thousands of people have flowed into it, fleeing Khan Younis and other areas. The town, normally home to around 280,000 people, 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.

Communicable diseases have significantly increased, along with cases of diarrhea, respiratory infections and hygiene-related conditions such as lice, the U.N. said. The World Food Program has warned of a “catastrophic hunger crisis.”

Even in Rafah, safety has proven elusive. Several strikes hit the town late Wednesday and early Thursday, sending a wave of wounded and dead streaming into a nearby hospital.

The military accused militants of firing rockets from open areas near Rafah. It released footage of a strike Wednesday on what it said were launchers positioned outside the town and a few hundred meters (yards) from a U.N. warehouse.

Meanwhile, entry of aid has slowed. The U.N. said only 80 aid trucks entered Gaza from Egypt on Wednesday, less than half the daily amount during the weeklong cease-fire, which was still far below the population’s needs.

The U.N. says some 1.87 million people — over 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million — have left their homes, and many of them have been displaced multiple times.

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 ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war and resulted in the taking of some 240 people hostage. An estimated 138 hostages remain in Gaza, mostly soldiers and civilian men, after 105 were freed during a cease-fire in late November.

BATTLES IN NORTH AND SOUTH

Troops have pushed into Khan Younis, 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. A built-up refugee camp inside the city was the childhood home of Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, and the group’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, as well as other Hamas leaders — though their current whereabouts are unknown.

In the afternoon, a heavy strike in the center of Khan Younis 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 nearby buildings gutted in the blast, and a pickup truck rushed off carrying several wounded men.

The military said Thursday that it struck dozens of militant targets in Khan Younis, including a tunnel shaft from which fighters had launched an attack. It said two of the attackers were killed.