Deadly Israeli airstrikes targeted eastern Gaza City on Thursday, forcing residents to flee as fears grow that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Palestinian territory is spreading to Lebanon.
Artillery and helicopter fire targeted the Choujaiya neighborhood, where fighting pitted Israeli soldiers against Palestinian fighters, according to Civil Defense and witnesses who reported numerous victims.
“Tens of thousands of civilians,” Civil Defense said, fled this area of the northern Gaza Strip after the army asked residents to evacuate.
Since the start of the war on October 7 between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Lebanese Hezbollah, which supports the Palestinian Islamist movement, has regularly exchanged fire with the Israeli army on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who completed a visit to Washington on Wednesday, assured that his country had “the capacity to return Lebanon to the Stone Age” in the event of war against Hezbollah. “We do not want a war,” he added, however, specifying that his government was “preparing for any scenario.”
Hezbollah announced Thursday evening that it had bombed a military base in northern Israel with “dozens of Katyusha rockets” in response to Israeli strikes, one of which killed one of its fighters.
In the Gaza Strip, bombings continue despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Sunday that the “intense” phase of the war was coming to an end.
Civil Defense counted at least five deaths in Gaza City on Thursday.
A resident of Shujaiya, Omar Sukar, said a bombing had surprised a crowd at a water distribution point in the Shabura sector. The tanker had just arrived when the bombing began, he said.
“Terrified residents are running into the streets… There are wounded and martyrs lying in the streets,” another witness said.
A doctor at al-Ahli hospital, Dr. Muhammad Ghurab, said that “around fifty victims”, including seven dead including four children, had been transported to his establishment “as Israeli forces advanced towards the is from Shujaiya”.
Hamas claimed that Israeli forces were “beginning a ground incursion” and denounced “the forced displacement of thousands of people under the pressure of incessant bombardment.”
In an Arabic message posted on
Many Palestinians were fleeing on foot through the ruined streets, according to AFP images.
” That’s enough ! We are devastated. We have lost our children and our homes, and we continue to flee from one place to another,” said a woman who did not give her name.
The Israeli army launched a ground offensive on May 7 in the town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, then presented as the final stage of its war against Hamas.
But fighting has since resumed in several other regions, notably in the north of the territory that the army had previously claimed to control.
The war was sparked on October 7 by an attack by Hamas commandos in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data Israelis.
Of 251 people kidnapped, 116 are still held hostage in Gaza, of whom 42 are dead, according to the army.
Demonstrators hostile to Benjamin Netanyahu gathered once again on Thursday in Jerusalem, demanding early elections and an agreement allowing the release of hostages.
In retaliation for the attack, Israel promised to destroy Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organization, along with the United States and the European Union.
The Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip has so far killed 37,765 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned on Wednesday that the spread of the Gaza war to Lebanon would be “potentially apocalyptic” and would spread to other countries in the region with “unforeseeable” consequences.
France called on Thursday “for the greatest restraint.”
The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the small territory of 2.4 million inhabitants, besieged by Israel, where water and food are lacking, and where most hospitals are out of service.
On Thursday, 21 cancer patients were evacuated to Egypt via the Israeli Kerem Shalom crossing point, according to an Egyptian medical source.
UNICEF also announced that it had reached an agreement with Israel to relaunch a water desalination plant in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Nearly half a million Gaza residents are facing “catastrophic” famine, according to a UN-backed report released Tuesday. Israel rejected the assessment on Thursday, calling it “misleading” and “biased.”
