Bombings and airstrikes killed at least 19 people in central and southern Gaza on Tuesday, including two police officers who were helping to protect humanitarian aid deliveries in the southern city of Rafah, according to Palestinian doctors.
Seventeen of the deaths, they said, occurred in separate Israeli airstrikes on the al-Bureij and al-Maghazi refugee camps and the city of Deir-al-Balah in central Gaza, and on Tuesday night, tanks were shelling an area just east of the al-Nusseirat camp, residents said.
Some told Reuters via a messaging app that the new Israeli military advance was sowing panic, with some families living in al-Maghazi beginning to flee under tank fire and four bombs falling near a clinic in the camp.
In a brief statement issued earlier in the day, the Israeli military said jets were striking Hamas militant targets in central Gaza, while ground forces operated “in a focused manner with guidance from intelligence information” in the al-Bureij region.
It gave no update on activities in Rafah, where Israeli forces invaded last month in what the army says was a limited operation to eliminate Hamas’ last intact fighting units after nearly eight months of devastating war in the Gaza Strip.
The small town on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt was home to about a million Palestinians who fled Israeli attacks elsewhere in the enclave, but most had to flee again in the face of Israel’s tank-led advance.
Israel launched a ground and area offensive against Gaza in October, vowing to destroy Hamas after militants crossed the border into southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts. Around 120 hostages remain in Gaza.
More than 36,000 people have died in Gaza as a result of the Israeli military campaign, according to the country’s health authorities. Thousands more bodies are reportedly buried under the debris. According to Qatar, on Tuesday, it sent Hamas an Israeli cease-fire proposal that was substantially closer to both sides’ positions than the three-phase plan that US President Joe Biden had presented on Friday.
Qatar, mediating the Gaza talks between Israel and Hamas, also emphasized that there needs to be a clear position from both sides to reach an agreement, a spokesman for its Foreign Ministry said at a press briefing.
“The ceasefire agreement must immediately end the long suffering of the entire population of Gaza and the hostages and their families and provide a roadmap for a permanent ceasefire and an end to the humanitarian crisis,” said Majed al-Ansari.
But an example for Hamas, the militant organization that has controlled Gaza since 2007, said on Tuesday that Israel must provide a “clear” commitment to an end to hostilities and a full withdrawal from Gaza before the group will consider a deal.
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated that there can be no permanent peace unless Hamas is eradicated, at a time when he is suffering from deep political divisions in his country related to the peace proposal supported by the USA.
