AgenPress – Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of Gaza’s northern border on Monday to retake an area where they claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago, while in the south tanks and troops pushed across a highway towards Rafah.
Some of more intense fighting they have been raging in both the north and the south for weeks. Israeli operations in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, have closed a main aid crossing point, which aid groups say is worsening an already dire situation.
Hundreds of thousands of people are forced to flee again after about half of Gaza’s population took refuge there after being pushed south by fighting elsewhere.
Gaza’s health authority on Monday appealed for international pressure to reopen access through the southern border to allow aid and medical supplies to arrive.
“The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no care or supplies and they cannot travel.”
In Jabalia in northern Gaza, a vast refugee camp built 75 years ago to house Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel, tanks pushed into the heart of the district.
Residents fled along rubble-strewn streets carrying bags of belongings. Tank shells fell in the center of the camp and airstrikes destroyed clusters of houses, they said. Health officials said they had recovered 20 bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight airstrikes.
