Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops preventing within the Gaza Strip on Monday, vowing to remain the course of the warfare even with the dying toll mounting. His journey got here hours after Gazan well being officers reported {that a} devastating in a single day strike on a crowded neighborhood had killed dozens.
The journey was the Israeli chief’s second identified go to to Gaza because the warfare started. Mr. Netanyahu has been dealing with rising stress from america to decrease the depth of the warfare, however he mentioned on Monday that Israel would “deepen” the preventing in coming days.
The strike late Sunday in central Gaza underscored the danger to civilians as preventing intensifies. Gazans have been mourningthe victims within the neighborhood, Al Maghazi, the place many who’ve fled preventing in different elements of the enclave have sought shelter.
Images of the aftermath on Monday confirmed a grey concrete constructing gaping with darkish holes the place rooms was once. On the foot of the constructing was a mound of particles, the place males seemed to be digging for survivors, or our bodies, with out the help of any heavy tools.
The Gaza Well being Ministry mentioned 70 folks had died in Sunday’s assaults on Al Maghazi. However the ongoing issue of reaching residents in Gaza, the place electrical energy shortages and communications blackouts have incessantly obscured the image of the warfare’s fallout, meant the small print have been blurry.
Because the Gazan dying toll has soared and civilians have been pushed into smaller and smaller corners of the enclave, worldwide requires a cease-fire have grown. Whereas Mr. Netanyahu’s authorities has mentioned it is planning for a new phase of the fighting, the Israeli chief has repeatedly insisted that his navy would sustain the warfare in Gaza until all of its goals were achieved.
“We’re not stopping, we are continuing to fight and are deepening the fighting in the coming days,” he mentioned in an announcement launched by his Likud Occasion on Monday, including that “this will be a long battle and it is not close to ending.”
Gazan Well being Ministry officers blamed Israeli airstrikes for the lethal assault on the Al Maghazi neighborhood of central Gaza. Israel’s navy mentioned Monday it was reviewing the episode.
Israeli forces are pushing deeper into central Gaza whereas additionally persevering with to battle Hamas fighters within the enclave’s north and south. Many locations in central and southern Gaza are crowded with individuals who have fled their houses.
“These rockets, it’s like they’re made to destroy mountains, not people,” mentioned Mohamed Abu Shaah, who had taken shelter at an acquaintance’s home in Al Maghazi together with his spouse and 7 daughters. In Al Maghazi, he mentioned, the inflow of the newly displaced meant that 20 folks have been routinely crowding right into a single room to sleep at evening.
It was the fifth time his family had packed up and rushed to a brand new place after preventing and airstrikes threatened the place they’d taken shelter.
“We are doing everything we can just to run for our lives,” he mentioned.
The rising dying toll in Gaza, which well being ministry officers have mentioned stands at about 20,000 folks prompted Pope Francis on Monday to focus his Christmas deal with partially on the plight of Palestinians, in addition to on Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
He talked about Bethlehem, the holy metropolis within the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution the place officers have largely canceled Christmas festivities in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, and pleaded for peace to “come in Israel and the Palestinian territories, where war is devastating the lives of those peoples.”
The pope additionally known as for “an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims,” and “for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid.”
Gaza is managed by Hamas, the armed group that led the Oct. 7 assaults on Israel that Israeli officers say killed about 1,200 folks.
Mr. Abu Shaah mentioned he had simply returned from prayer late Sunday evening and was about to place his daughters to sleep within the mattress that 9 of them shared after they heard a loud thud. Afraid they might discover themselves beneath the rubble, they ran downstairs to a scene of devastation.
“We’ve seen a lot, but this is beyond anything we could have imagined,” he mentioned. “Today my family and I are alive, but what about tomorrow?”
Earlier than the warfare, about 33,000 Palestinians lived in Al Maghazi, an space overlaying solely a few quarter of a sq. mile, in keeping with the United Nations company that aids Palestinians. Most households within the neighborhood have been initially from villages within the heart and south of what was Palestine earlier than they fled or have been forcibly displaced within the 1948 warfare that surrounded Israel’s institution as a state.
The neighborhood has been hit a number of occasions earlier than, in keeping with U.N. stories.
Save the Kids, an support group, known as the strike on Al Maghazi “another episode of the ongoing horror” in Gaza.
“Families and children are not targets and must be protected,” it mentioned in a submit on X, previously often known as Twitter. “We need an immediate and definitive cease-fire to end this misery.”
Jason Horowitz contributed reporting from Rome.
