CAIRO (Reuters): Israeli forces battled Hamas fighters in the narrow alleyways of Jabalia in northern Gaza on Friday in some of the fiercest engagements since they returned to the area a week ago, while in the south militants attacked tanks massing around Rafah.
Residents said Israeli armour had thrust as far as the market at the heart of Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, and that bulldozers were demolishing homes and shops in the path of the advance.
“Tanks and planes are wiping out residential districts and markets, shops, restaurants, everything. It is all happening before the one-eyed world,” Ayman Rajab, a resident of western Jabalia, said via a chat app.
Israel had said its forces had cleared Jabalia months earlier in the Gaza war, triggered by the deadly Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, but said last week it was returning to prevent the Islamist group re-grouping there.
At the southern end of Gaza, thick smoke rose over Rafah, bordering Egypt, where an escalating Israeli assault has sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from what was one of the few remaining places of refuge.
“People are terrified and they’re trying to get away,” Jens Laerke, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson, said in Geneva, adding that most were following orders to move north towards the coast but that there were no safe routes or destinations.
As the fighting raged, the U.S. military said trucks had started moving aid ashore from a temporary pier built off the coast, the first to reach the besieged enclave by sea in weeks.
The United Nations said it had finalised plans to distribute the aid, while reiterating that truck convoys by land – disrupted this month by the assault on Rafah – were still the most efficient way of getting aid in.
“To stave off the horrors of famine, we must use the fastest and most obvious route to reach the people of Gaza – and for that, we need access by land now,” deputy U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said.
Hamas demanded an end to Israel’s siege and accused Washington of complicity with an Israeli policy of “starvation and blockade”.
The White House said U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would visit Israel on Sunday and stress the need for an offensive to be targeted at Hamas militants rather than a full-scale assault on Rafah, adding that it was important that Israel open the Rafah border crossing with Egypt immediately.
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had killed more than 60 militants in Jabalia in recent days and located a weapons warehouse close to a shelter complex in what it described as a “divisional-level offensive”.
A divisional operation would typically involve several brigades of thousands of troops each, making it one of the biggest of the war.
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