Fighting intensifies across Gaza
Over 300,000 people forced to flee Rafah
Israeli tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah on Monday as hundreds of thousands of residents fled some of the most intense fighting in weeks along the northern and southern edges of the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency in Gaza, estimated 360,000 people had fled the southern city of Rafah since the first evacuation order a week ago. Israel stepped up aerial and ground bombardments in eastern areas of the city while Palestinians packed cars, trucks and carts to flee the violence.
The Israeli operations in Rafah, which borders Egypt, have closed a main crossing point for aid, which humanitarian groups say is worsening an already dire situation.
Gaza’s health authority on Monday appealed for international pressure to reopen access via the southern border to allow in aid and medical supplies.
“The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no treatment and supplies and they cannot travel,” it said.
“The situation is dreadful and the sounds of explosions never stopped,” Bassam, 57, from the Shaboura neighborhood in Rafah, told Reuters via a chat app.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a phone call with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant late Sunday, “reaffirmed the U.S. opposition to a major military ground operation in Rafah,” the State Department said.
Fighting in the southern city of Rafah has been ramping up for weeks, but now Israeli forces that left some northern areas months ago were back as part of a “mop-up” effort to prevent fighters from returning, the Israeli military said.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built 75 years ago to house Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel, tanks pushed toward the heart of the district.
Residents fled along rubble-strewn streets carrying bags of belongings.
Tank shells landed in the center of the camp and airstrikes destroyed clusters of houses, they said. Health officials said they had recovered 20 bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight airstrikes.
“We don’t know where to go. We have been displaced from one place to the next. … We are running in the streets. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the tank and the bulldozer. It is on that street,” said one woman, who did not give her name.
Israel’s military said in early January that it had “dismantled Hamas’ military framework in Jabalia,” although it expected to return to the area periodically to fight militants.
Palestinians say the need to return to earlier battlegrounds is proof Israel’s military objectives are unattainable.
Israeli troops are seeking to wipe out Hamas, which has said it is committed to Israel’s destruction. The militant group burst into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
In other developments:
● Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was heckled Monday while speaking at a Memorial Day ceremony at Jerusalem’s
Mount Herzl military cemetery. Some protesters chanted “You took my children.” Others silently walked out.
● Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that “more than 1,000” Hamas militants are being treated in Turkish hospitals. He described Hamas as a “resistance organization.”
● Four Israeli soldiers were injured when two antitank missiles fired from Lebanon slammed into the Yiftah region of Israel, the Israeli military said.
UN: Fewer women, children killed than reported
The percentage of women and children killed during the war in Gaza is considerably lower than the nearly 70% the Hamas-run Health Ministry previously said, according to revised numbers published by the United Nations.
Relying on Health Ministry data, the U.N. on May 6 reported more than 14,500 children and 9,500 women among the 34,735 fatalities in Gaza, or 69% percent.
Two days later, that figure was down to 52% − 7,797 children and 4,959 women out of a total of 24,686 fatalities for whom the ministry has complete details. The rest were categorized as men and elderly people.
Ministry officials, who don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in their tally, recently acknowledged they don’t have enough identifying information for more than 11,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of the war.
However, the total of approximately 35,000 deaths in the territory remains the same.
UN staffer killed in Rafah
A United Nations Safety and Security worker was killed and another wounded Monday when their vehicle was attacked while traveling to the European Hospital in Rafah, according to a statement from U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq.
No details were immediately released.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who has called for an investigation, “condemns all attacks on UN personnel” and sends his condolences to the family of the fallen staff member, the statement said.
“With the conflict in Gaza continuing to take a heavy toll – not only on civilians, but also on humanitarian workers – the Secretary-General reiterates his urgent appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and for the release of all hostages,” Haq stated.
Israelis attack aid trucks bound for Gaza
Videos authenticated by Al Jazeera show Israelis attacking aid trucks carrying food at a checkpoint in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, preventing the aid from reaching Gaza. Israeli protesters blocked the trucks and tossed food packages on the road in the latest in a series of incidents.
Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested at the protest, according to a statement from lawyers representing the protesters. The protesters object to delivery of humanitarian supplies into an area controlled by Hamas for fear the aid will not reach civilians in need, the lawyers say.
Contributing: Reuters