Tag: Gaza City

Heavy bombardment hit Gaza City’s Shujaiya district for a fourth day yesterday, months after the Israeli army declared Hamas’s command structure dismantled in the northern area.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the devastated neighbourhood, where the army said it has fought Hamas both “above and below ground” in tunnels.

There were also reports of clashes in central Gaza and the southern Rafah area, a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the “intense phase” of the war raging since October 7 was nearing an end.

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The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that “60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from Shujaiya since new fighting broke out there on Thursday and the army issued evacuation orders.

Months of on-and-off talks towards a Gaza truce and hostage release deal have meanwhile made little progress, with Hamas saying Saturday there was “nothing new” in a revised plan presented by U.S. mediators.

United States President Joe Biden late last month outlined what he called an Israeli plan for a six-week truce and exchange of some hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Washington last week presented “new language” for parts of the proposed deal, according to U.S. news site Axios.

Palestinians have fled Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood after Israeli forces carried out air raids and sent ground vehicles into the ravaged area, according to Gaza’s civil defence.

 Muhammad Ghurab, a doctor at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital, said yesterday the facility had received seven “martyrs including four children” and more than 40 others who were wounded “as the Israeli forces advanced to the east of Shujayea neighbourhood”.

Civil defence teams pulled out several bodies from the rubble following the attacks, the civil defence said in a statement, adding that search and rescue operations were continuing.

 Hamas said in a statement the assault has led to “a number of martyrs and has forced thousands of Palestinians to flee under the pressure of ongoing shelling of the defenceless civilians”.

Hamas said that the repeated attacks on “cities, camps and districts, and the deliberate killing of civilians and the destruction of infrastructure” was part of a “fascist policy” to increase the suffering of Palestinians.

The group said it would continue to “inflict heavy losses” on Israel’s army until the “aggression is stopped and expelled from our land”.

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Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said the majority of people in Gaza City’s Shujayea and Tuffa neighbourhoods were displaced Palestinians.

“They have found themselves in another dilemma, pushed to move west after the Israeli military issued sharp evacuation orders, sending text messages and dropping leaflets,” Mahmoud said, adding that the orders came approximately 30 minutes into the military’s operations there.

 “People are being forced into internal displacement over and over. It is becoming part of their daily routine, a new normal,” Mahmoud said.

He said some families cannot evacuate given the “dense presence of quadcopters, surveillance drones and heavy artillery”.