PEOPLE SCARED OF OFFENSIVE BUT MANY HAVE NO WAY TO LEAVE
Bassam Al-Qanou, a displaced man sheltering with around 30 family members in a ragged improvised tent camp on the beach, said they had no way to get out, and nowhere to go.
“We are scared, but what can we do?” he said, adding that the children couldn’t sleep because of fear and the incessant boom of missile strikes from sea, air and ground.
The military has been dropping leaflets urging residents to flee towards a designated “humanitarian zone” in the south of the territory, but aid agencies say conditions there are dire, with insufficient food, medicine and space and inadequate shelter.
The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that critical shortages of blood in Gaza hospitals could halt key services within days.
Four more Palestinians, including a child, have died of malnutrition and starvation in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said, raising deaths from such causes to at least 435 people, including 147 children, since the war started.
Israel says the extent of hunger in Gaza has been exaggerated.
The Hamas armed wing said hostages captured on Oct 7, 2023, were spread across Gaza City neighbourhoods. “The start of this criminal operation and its expansion means you will not receive any captive, alive or dead,” it said in a statement.
Of the 251 people taken hostage during the Oct 7 attack, 48 remain in Gaza, with Israel estimating that around 20 are still alive. Families of hostages have urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the offensive and negotiate, but he has insisted that military pressure will secure their release.
The Hamas-run government’s media office said that a total of 3,542 people had been killed across the Gaza Strip from August 11, the day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to seize control of the territory, to Wednesday.
It said 56% of them were killed in Gaza City and the northern part of the enclave, and 44% in the central and southern areas, which it said demonstrated that Israel was trying to depopulate the north whilst not sparing the south.
Israel blames Hamas for the continuation of the war, saying the group could end it now if it surrendered, disarmed and disbanded.
