Israel floods Hamas tunnels in Gaza
Controlled detonation destroys U.N.-run school for Palestinian refugees
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Amid international backlash, Israeli forces continued to carry out strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, crushing Palestinians in homes in their war against the forces of Hamas.
The war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel has already brought unprecedented death and destruction to the impoverished coastal enclave, with much of northern Gaza obliterated, more than 18,000 Palestinians killed and over 80% of the population of 2.3 million pushed from their homes.
The U.S. has urged Israel to do more to reduce civilian casualties since it launched its invasion of southern Gaza at the beginning of the month. But the toll has continued to mount at seemingly the same dizzying rate.
The health care system and humanitarian aid operations have collapsed in large parts of Gaza, amid Israel’s blockade of the territory and intense airstrikes and fighting, and aid workers have warned of starvation and the spread of disease among displaced people in overcrowded shelters and tent camps.
NORTHERN DEVASTATION
Gaza City and much of the surrounding north have already suffered widespread destruction from more than two months of bombardment. Amid the rubble, Israeli ground troops are still locked in heavy combat with Palestinian fighters, more than six weeks after soldiers invaded the north.
Fierce clashes raged Tuesday in Gaza City’s Zaytoun and Shijaiya neighborhoods, as well as in Jabaliya, a densely built urban refugee camp, residents said.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians remain in the north, huddled in homes or in U.N. schools-turned-shelters. As airstrikes and drones smash houses, first responders are unable to reach anyone buried in the wreckage, residents said.
“It was massive,” Mustafa Abu Taha, an agricultural worker, said of the sound of gunfire and explosions in Shijaiya, where he lives.
Amal Radwan, a woman sheltering in a school in Jabaliya, said the situation was “catastrophic,” as Israeli troops tried to advance deep into the district and unleashed heavy fire against fighters.
“Whenever the resistance hit them, they hit us very hard. It has become crazy. They strike everywhere with no regard to women or children,” she said.
Outside Gaza City, Israeli troops using a controlled detonation blew up a school run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, in the northern town of Beit Hanoun. Footage posted online showed soldiers cheering as they watched the building collapse in a giant blast and pall of smoke.
UNRWA chief Phillippe Lazzarini confirmed the demolition in a post on X on Tuesday, calling it “outrageous.” There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. On Saturday, it said militants opened fire from inside an UNRWA school in the town.
Israel also has begun flooding some Hamas tunnels, a U.S. official confirmed Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the action. Israelis said they are testing the targeted flooding of tunnels on a limited basis and are exploring the idea as one of a range of options to degrade the tunnel network, according to another U.S. official familiar with the matter.
President Joe Biden said during a news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that there were assertions that no hostages were in Gaza tunnels being flooded with seawater by the Israelis, but “I don’t know that for a fact.”
CONTINUOUS STRIKES
Strikes overnight and into Tuesday in southern Gaza — where almost all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is now crowded — killed dozens, according to hospital records.
Islam Harb’s three children were among those killed when Israeli airstrikes flattened four residential buildings in the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border. At least 23 people were killed, including seven children and six women, according to an Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies arrive at a hospital.
“My twin girls, Maria and Joud, were martyred, and my little son, Ammar, also martyred,” Harb said.
In central Gaza, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah received the bodies of 33 people killed in strikes overnight, including 16 women and four children, according to hospital records. Many were killed in strikes that hit residential buildings in the built-up Maghazi refugee camp.
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahia, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital, ordering all men, including medics, into the courtyard, said Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry. The hospital had 65 patients in intensive care and six newborns in incubators, the U.N. said, and some 3,000 displaced people were sheltering there with little food or water.
The Israeli military says it is rounding up men in northern Gaza as it searches for Hamas fighters. Photos and videos circulating online show groups of detainees stripped to their underwear, bound and blindfolded, and some who have been released say they were beaten and denied food and water.
Asked about the hospital, the military said it “continues to act against Hamas strongholds in the north of Gaza,” including Beit Lahia, and takes “all feasible precautions to mitigate harm to noncombatants.”