Battles increasing fear for isolated Palestinians
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.
Officials with the United Nations 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 off most of Gaza 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. Arab and Islamic nations called for a vote Friday on a draft council resolution demanding a humanitarian 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 that he believes threatens international peace and security. The power has been used only 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 in a call with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer that casualties are still too high , a senior State Department official said. Blinken told Dermer that Israel must also do more to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
Israel says it must crush Hamas’ military capabilities and remove it from power after the Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war.
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.
The World Food Program has warned of a “catastrophic hunger crisis.”
“There are 8,000 people in this shelter, and any vegetables disappear before I see them because people seize everything so fast,” said Mazen Junaid, a father of six from northern Gaza.
Deir al-balah is trapped between ground fighting in northern Gaza and in Khan Younis to the south, and it has continued to come under bombardment. An additional 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 Egyptian border, the U.N. said. Meanwhile, entry of aid from Egypt has slowed.
Rafah is part of the rapidly shrinking area where civilians can seek shelter. Across Gaza, 1.87 million people — over 80% of the population of 2.3 million — have been driven from their homes.
Even in Rafah, safety has proved elusive. Several strikes hit the town late Wednesday and early Thursday, sending a wave of wounded and dead streaming into a nearby hospital.
The Israeli 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 yards from a U.N. warehouse.