DEIR AL-BALA, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces advanced deeper into Gaza Strip’s largest city, pursuing militants who have regrouped there, prompting thousands of Palestinians on Monday to flee areas devastated in the early weeks of the Palestinian conflict. Nine months of war.
Hamas has warned that the recent attacks and evacuations in Gaza City could lead to the breakdown of long-running negotiations over a ceasefire and the release of hostages. Recently, the gap has narrowed.
Israeli forces are battling militants again in northern Gaza in areas they say were nearly cleared months ago. The army ordered evacuations ahead of the raids, but Palestinians say they do not feel safe anywhere. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, some multiple times. Packed into a muggy tent camp.
Israel ordered a withdrawal from northern Gaza within weeks of the war starting and has prevented most people from returning, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain living in shelters and the remains of their homes.
“We fled in the darkness, during heavy air raids,” said Sayeda Abdel Baki, a mother of three who had sought refuge with relatives in the Daraj neighborhood. “This is my fifth time fleeing.”
Residents reported artillery, tank fire and airstrikes. The Gaza Health Ministry, which has limited access to the northern Gaza Strip, did not immediately report any casualties.
Israel ordered further evacuations in other parts of central Gaza City. The army said it had intelligence indicating that fighters from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were in the area and urged residents to flee to the city of Deir al-Balah to the south.
Israel accuses Hamas and other extremists of hiding out among civilians. In Gaza City’s Shijaiya neighborhood, where fighting has been ongoing for weeks, troops raided and destroyed schools and clinics that had been turned into extremist facilities, the army said.
The war has destroyed large swaths of the urban landscape and caused a humanitarian catastrophe.
Barriers to trade
Israel and Hamas appeared closer to reaching a ceasefire agreement than they have in months that would halt fighting in exchange for the release of dozens of hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.
CIA Director William Burns returned to the region on Monday for talks in Cairo, according to Egyptian state-run Kahera TV, which is close to the security services. Israeli media said an Israeli delegation was also heading to the Egyptian capital.
But obstacles remain, even as Hamas has conceded a key demand: that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any deal. A key part of that change, officials told The Associated Press, is The level of destruction caused by Israeli attacks.
Hamas still wants assurances from the mediators that the talks will end in a permanent ceasefire, according to two officials familiar with the talks. The current draft says the U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators will “use their best efforts” to ensure that the talks lead to an agreement to end the fighting.
Israel rejects any agreement that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact. Netanyahu to reiterate conditions on Sunday.
Hamas said on Monday it was “offering flexibility and willingness” to facilitate an agreement, while accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “obstructing the negotiations.”
Meanwhile, Hamas’ top political leader Ismail Haniyeh warned the mediators of “catastrophic consequences” if Israel continues its operations in Gaza City and said Prime Minister Netanyahu and the army would bear “full responsibility” for the breakdown in the talks, the group said in a later statement.
The two officials said there was also an impasse over whether Hamas could choose high-profile prisoners whose release Israel wants in exchange for the hostages. Some of the prisoners have been convicted of killing Israelis, and Israel does not want Hamas to decide who to release. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with media.
Bombing keeps rescuers away from bodies
The residents of the Gaza Strip saw that the suffering was endless.
Maha Mahfouz fled her home with her two children and many neighbors in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City. She said their area was not included in the latest evacuation order, but “we are panicking because the bombings and shootings are happening so close to us.”
Fadel Naeem, director of Al-Ahli Hospital, said patients fled the hospital even though no evacuation orders had been issued for the surrounding area. He said serious cases had been evacuated to other hospitals in northern Gaza.
Marwan Al Sultan, director of the Indonesian hospital, said it had received 80 patients and wounded from Al Ahli but they were crammed “everywhere”.
“Many cases require emergency surgery, many with direct shots to the head and intensive care. Fuel and medicine supplies are dwindling,” he said in a text message. He said the hospital had also received 16 bodies of people killed in the Israeli offensive, half of them women and children.
Mahmoud Basar, a spokesman for Hamas’ Civil Defense, said the Israeli bombing had led to the banning of the Tufa, Daraj and Shijaiya neighborhoods. In an audio message, he said troops had shelled a house in Gaza City’s Jaffa neighborhood and that emergency workers “saw people lying on the ground but were unable to rescue them.”
The war has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, but the figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israeli officials say a Hamas cross-border raid on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians. The militants took about 250 hostages. About 120 are still being held, and about a third are said to have died.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Melanie Lydman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
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