Battle rages in S. Gaza
Many trapped by heavy fighting near hospital in 2nd-largest city
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces battled Palestinian fighters Wednesday near the main hospital in Gaza’s second-largest city, where medics said hundreds of patients and thousands of displaced people were trapped by the fighting.
Israel has ordered residents to leave a swath of downtown Khan Younis that includes Nasser Hospital and two smaller medical facilities as the country pushes ahead with its three-month-old offensive against Hamas. The United Nations humanitarian office said the area was home to 88,000 Palestinians and was hosting another 425,000 displaced by fighting elsewhere.
But the aid group Doctors Without Borders said fleeing was not an option for many. It said its staff was trapped inside Nasser with some 850 patients and thousands of displaced people because the surrounding roads were inaccessible or too dangerous. The hospital is one of only two in southern Gaza that can still treat critically ill patients, the group said. Gaza’s Health Ministry also said the facility had been isolated.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with the offensive until “complete victory” against Hamas, which started the war with its Oct. 7 assault across the border, killing some 1,200 people in Israel and abducting another 250.
The Israeli military said its forces were battling militants inside Khan Younis after encircling it a day earlier. Military officials said aircraft were striking targets as part of the operations there and had also targeted suspected militants in central and northern Gaza.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said nine people were killed when a UN training center in Khan Younis where 800 people were sheltering was struck by tank rounds, according to the agency’s Gaza director, Thomas White. The number of deaths was likely to climb, Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the agency known as UNRWA, wrote on the X platform.
The agency said the same site was also hit earlier this week, killing six. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. Israel says Hamas militants operate in the area of U.N. facilities, as well as in other civilian structures.
Thousands of people fled south Tuesday from Khan Younis toward the town of
Rafah. The UN says some 1.5 million people — around two-thirds of Gaza’s population — are crowded into shelters and tent camps in and around Rafah, which is on the border with Egypt.
Even there, Palestinians have found little safety, with Israel regularly carrying out strikes in and around the town. At least five people were killed when a strike hit a mosque Wednesday in Rafah, according to The Associated Press journalists who viewed the bodies at a nearby hospital.
Palestinian witnesses said that in recent days Israeli soldiers and tanks had pushed into parts of Muwasi, a sandy area along the coast that Israel had declared a safe zone. Tens of thousands of people were living there in tents without basic services.
In all, some 1.7 million people have been displaced within Gaza, according to the UN Palestinian refugee agency. Most have fled from the north, where Israel’s air and ground offensive has reduced entire neighborhoods to shelled-out wastelands, raising the question of whether residents will ever be able to return.
At least 210 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll from the war to 25,700, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The agency’s count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but it says most of the dead are women and children.
UN officials have expressed fears that even more people could die from disease, with at least one-quarter of the population facing starvation.
The many deaths in Gaza led South Africa to accuse Israel of genocide, and the UN’s world court at The Hague planned to decide Friday whether to issue an interim ruling ordering Israel to halt hostilities.
In addition to defeating Hamas, Netanyahu says Israel is also committed to returning the over 100 hostages who remain in captivity after most of the others were freed during a November ceasefire.
Egypt and Qatar are working on a new agreement, and the White House’s Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk, was in Doha on Wednesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. The visit came a day after McGurk met with officials in Egypt in hopes of establishing a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas.
But officials say the gap between the two sides is still wide.