Israeli army floods the ‘Gaza metro’
– Israel’s army has begun flooding Hamas’ network of tunnels, as intense fighting rages in Gaza, with the United Nations (UN) warning of the potential “collapse of the humanitarian system” in the territory after a funding row hit its Palestinian aid agency.
The epicentre of the fighting in recent weeks has been Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, where vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings and where an AFP journalist witnessed people leaving town on Tuesday as explosions sounded nearby.
“We left the Nasser hospital without any mattresses, under tank and air strikes. We didn’t know where to go,” said one young woman. “We’re out in the cold, left to fend for ourselves, with no tents and nothing to survive on.”
Elsewhere in the city, Israeli troops gave journalists a tour of a tunnel they said had been used as a Hamas command centre.
“Every war has its own characteristics and I think this war, its basic character is about that overand underground manoeuvre,” Dan Goldfus, commander of the 98th Paratroopers Division, told reporters outside the shaft.
“I think the enemy is on the run and is trying to put itself under the civilians as much as it can.”
The Israeli military, which has dubbed the vast network of tunnels “the Gaza metro”, said it had begun flooding the underground complexes with water in a bid to “neutralise the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network”.
The war has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population, according to the UN, which warned the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory would only get worse if major donors didn’t restore funding to UNRWA, its main aid agency for Palestinians.
Israel has alleged several agency staff members took part in the 7 October attacks, leading key donor countries including the US and Germany to suspend funding.
After a recent meeting in Paris between US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials yielded a proposed framework for a truce, Hamas confirmed on Tuesday it had received the proposal and was “in the process of examining it and delivering its response”.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, whose government helped broker a previous truce last November, voiced hope an initial deal might lead to a permanent ceasefire.
He said the current plan included a phased truce that would see women and children hostages released first, with more aid also entering Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “I would like to make it clear... we will not withdraw the IDF [army] from the Gaza Strip and we will not release thousands of terrorists. None of this will happen.” –
Nothing can “replace or substitute” the UN Palestinian refugee agency, whose staff were implicated in the Hamas attacks on Israel, the United Nations’ (UN) coordinator for Gaza aid said, even as Israel made new claims against it.
Several countries, including the US, Britain, Germany and Japan, have suspended funding to the UNRWA agency, and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was holding crunch talks with donor countries.
Agency chiefs in the UN’s highest-level humanitarian coordination forum, including the heads of the World Health Organisation, the UN rights office, the UN