Israeli forces have sealed off key hospitals in southern Gaza during their attack on Khan Younis | PHOTO: REUTERS
By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Fadi Shana and Dan Williams
A UN training center housing tens of thousands of displaced people was hit on Wednesday, causing “mass casualties” as buildings burned, a senior UN aid official said as Israeli forces advanced through southern Gaza’s main city.
Israeli forces also shut down key hospitals in southern Gaza during their assault on Khan Younis, Palestinian officials said, cutting off the main escape route for hundreds of thousands of residents and people seeking refuge there.
In response to questions about the fire at the center – led by UNRWA, the UN aid agency for the Palestinians – the Israeli military said the wider area was a major base of Hamas militants.
“The dismantling of Hamas’s military framework in western Khan Yunis is at the core of the logic behind the operation,” the report said.
Several sources had previously told Reuters that Israel and the Hamas group that controls Gaza had made some progress in weeks of proxy talks on a 30-day ceasefire that would see the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and more aid enclave would enter.
But that prospect seemed remote on Wednesday.
In their biggest operation in a month, Israeli tanks have pushed through Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering after leaving the north – the starting point of the war.
Their main target appears to be the area around the long-standing Khan Younis refugee camp, which also includes the Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals, as well as the UNRWA training centre.
“Fighting is escalating in Khan Younis… the @UNRWA Training Center hosting 10,000 displaced people has just been hit – buildings on fire and mass casualties – safe access to/from the center denied for two days – people trapped,” Thomas White, director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, said on X.
GUN FIGHTS
Residents reported heavy gun battles in the west of the city, where the army said it had killed “numerous” squadrons of gunmen “with snipers, tanks and air fire”.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said in a statement: “The occupation is isolating hospitals in Khan Younis and carrying out massacres in the western part of the city…
“Hundreds of injuries, patients and deliveries are facing serious complications due to the lack of access to the Nasser Medical Complex.”
The Palestinian Red Cross, which runs Al-Amal Hospital, said troops had blocked staff inside the hospital and imposed a curfew in the area, including the local headquarters, where three displaced people had been killed.
Israel says Hamas fighters operate in and around hospitals, which hospital staff and Hamas deny.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of the area, home to half a million people, four-fifths of whom had been displaced by fighting in other parts of the coastal strip, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
However, Israeli tanks advancing east along al-Bahar Road towards the Nasser Hospital blocked the escape route from the city to the Mediterranean coastal road.
The highway leads to Rafah on the southern edge of Gaza, bordering Egypt, which is already packed with more than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents. Some people resorted to dirt roads to try to escape Khan Younis, said residents and freelance reporters leaving the area.
Palestinian health officials said at least 25,700 Gazans have been killed in the war, including 210 in the past 24 hours, and thousands more are expected to be lost under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Israel says it has killed about 9,000 militants in total, a figure that Hamas dismisses as an attempt to “present a false victory.”
First print: January 25, 2024 | 12:43 pm IST