Israeli air strikes kill 32 in south Gaza amid calls for civilians to
flee
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[November 18, 2023]
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli air strikes on
residential blocks in south Gaza killed at least 32 Palestinians on
Saturday, medics said, after Israel again warned civilians to relocate
as it turns to attacking Hamas in the enclave's south after subduing the
north.
Such a move could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled
south from the Israeli assault on Gaza City to move again, along with
residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, worsening a dire
humanitarian crisis.
"We're asking people to relocate. I know it's not easy for many of them,
but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire," Mark
Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC
on Friday.
Israel vowed to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls the
Gaza Strip after its Oct. 7 rampage into Israel in which its fighters
killed 1,200 people and dragged 240 hostages into the enclave, according
to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel has bombed much of Gaza City - the enclave's urban
core - to rubble, ordered the depopulation of the northern half of the
narrow strip and displaced around two-thirds of Gaza's 2.3 million
Palestinians. Many of those who have fled fear their homelessness could
become permanent.
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Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than
12,000, 5,000 of them children. The United Nations deems those figures
credible, though they are now updated infrequently due to the difficulty
of collecting information.
Overnight on Saturday, 26 Palestinians were killed and 23 injured by an
air strike on two apartments in a multi-storey block in a busy
residential district of Khan Younis, according to health officials.
Eyad Al-Zaeem told Reuters he lost his aunt, her children and her
grandchildren in the air strike in Khan Younis, and that all had
evacuated from north Gaza on Israeli army orders only to die where the
army told them they could be safe.
"All of them were martyred. They had nothing to do with the (Hamas)
resistance," said Zaeem, standing outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital
in Khan Younis where 26 bodies were laid out before they were to be
carried by loved ones to burials.
A few km (miles) to the north, six Palestinians were killed when a house
was bombed from the air in the town of Deir Al-Balah, according to
health authorities.
An Israeli military statement on Saturday made no mention of air strike
locations. It said only that over the past 24 hours its air force hit
dozens of Gaza targets including militants, command centers, rocket
launch sites and munitions factories.
Israel has said Hamas combatants use residential buildings and districts
in densely populated Gaza as cover, something the Islamist movement
denies.
Israel had on Thursday dropped leaflets over Khan Younis telling
residents to move to shelters, suggesting military operations on the
ground there was imminent.
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Regev said Israeli troops would have to advance into the city to oust
Hamas fighters from underground tunnels and bunkers but that no such
"enormous infrastructure" existed in less built-up areas to the west,
closer to the Mediterranean coast.
Regev said that since western areas were closer to the Rafah border
crossing with Egypt, humanitarian aid could be brought in "as quickly as
possible".
AL SHIFA HOSPITAL
At Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa in Gaza City, Israel said its
forces had found a vehicle with a large number of weapons and what it
called a Hamas tunnel shaft as it combs the complex in search of what it
says is the militants' command centre.
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![](../images/111823PIX/news_o97.jpg)
A woman holding a baby stands at the site of an Israeli strike on
the apartment building, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern
Gaza Strip November 18, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
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Much to international alarm, Israel has made Al Shifa a primary
target of its ground advance, with its military saying that the
hospital sits above a vast underground Hamas bunker. Hamas and
hospital staff deny that and say Israel's findings there have so far
established no such thing.
The Israeli army said it briefly fought militants outside the
hospital earlier this week before entering it to search it and
question staff, and there had been no violence inside.
It released a video on Friday that it said showed a tunnel entrance
in an outdoor area of the hospital. It appeared the area had been
excavated. A bulldozer appeared in the background.
"We are seeing the Hamas presence in all of (Gaza) hospitals. This
is a clear-cut presence," Israeli Major General Yaron Finkelman said
in a video showing him conferring with army engineers excavating
areas within Al Shifa's grounds.
Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes.
On Saturday, Palestinian officials said the Israeli military had
ordered the evacuation of all staff and 1,000-1,500 patients from Al
Shifa, with evacuees facing treks along dangerous, bombed-out roads
littered with dead bodies.
The army denied the accusation, saying it had acceded to a request
from Al Shifa's director to "expand and assist" in more voluntary
evacuations via a "secure route". Doctors and medics could stay to
support patients too weak to be evacuated, it said.
Al Shifa staff said a premature baby died at the hospital on Friday,
the first baby to die there in the two days since Israeli forces
entered. Three had died in the previous days while the hospital was
encircled by Israeli forces.
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FUEL DELIVERIES
With the war entering its seventh week, there was no sign of a
let-up, despite international calls for a ceasefire or at least
"humanitarian pauses" to tackle critical shortages of food,
medicines, drinking water and fuel afflicting civilians.
Amid warnings that its Gaza siege raised the immediate risk of
starvation, Israel on Friday appeared to bow to international
pressure in agreeing to allow fuel trucks in and promising "no
limitation" on aid requested by the United Nations.
But the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said no aid entered Gaza for a
third day running on Friday and distributions had come to a virtual
halt due to a lack of security guarantees and fuel. It said raw
sewage has begun flowing in the streets in some areas as a result of
a lack of fuel to run infrastructure.
Deadly violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
since the Gaza war began. At least five militants from the armed
wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party were killed
in an Israeli air strike on a building in the Balata refugee camp in
Nablus, Palestinian medics said on Saturday.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, James Mackenzie Henriette Chacar
and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Jonathan Landay and Mark Heinrich;
Editing by Kim Coghill, William Mallard and Tomasz Janowski)
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