Fear grips Gazans as Israeli strikes hit one of last places they can go

Israeli forces struck the southern Gaza town of Rafah twice overnight, residents said Thursday, sowing fear in one of the last places where civilians could seek refuge after Israel widened its offensive against Hamas to areas already packed with displaced people.

UN officials say there are no safe places in Gaza. Heavy fighting in and around the southern city of Khan Younis has displaced tens of thousands of people in a territory where over 80 per cent of the population has already fled their homes, and cut most of Gaza off from deliveries of food, water and other vital aid.

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Two months into the war, the grinding offensive has set off renewed alarms internationally, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres using a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe” and urging members to demand a ceasefire.

The US has called on Israel to limit civilian deaths and displacement, saying too many Palestinians were killed when it obliterated much of Gaza City and the north. But it has also pledged unwavering support for Israel and appears likely to block any such U.N. effort to halt the fighting.

Israel says it must crush Hamas' military capabilities and remove it from power following the October 7 attack that ignited the war. Troops have pushed into Khan Younis, Gaza's second-largest city, which Israeli officials have portrayed as Hamas' center of gravity — something they previously said was in Gaza City and its Shifa Hospital.

Israel has ordered the evacuation of some two dozen southern neighbourhoods, rather than the entire region as it did in the north, which the military says shows increased concern for civilians.

But the areas where Palestinians can seek safety are rapidly receding. With northern and central Gaza largely isolated and cut off from aid, Palestinians are heading south to Rafah and other areas along the border with Egypt, where family homes are packed tight and makeshift shelters are overflowing.

Even there, safety has proven elusive, as Israel continues to strike what it says are Hamas targets across the coastal enclave.

A strike late Wednesday levelled a home in Rafah, sending a wave of wounded streaming into a nearby hospital. Eyad Al Hobi, who witnessed the attack, said around 20 people were killed, including women and children. Another house was hit early Thursday, residents said.

“We live in fear every moment, for our children, ourselves, our families,” said Dalia Abu Samhadaneh, now living in Rafah with her family after fleeing Khan Younis. “We live with the anxiety of expulsion.”

The military meanwhile accused militants of firing rockets from open areas near Rafah in the humanitarian zone. It released footage of a strike Wednesday on what it said were launchers positioned outside the town and a few hundred metres from a UN warehouse.

The UN says some 1.87 million people — over 80 per cent of the population of 2.3 million — have already fled their homes, many of them displaced multiple times.

Israel's campaign has killed more than 16,200 people in Gaza — most of them women and children — and wounded more than 42,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says many others are trapped under rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.

Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group, said another 115 bodies arrived at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir Al Balah in a 24-hour period.

“The hospital is full, the morgue is full,” the group said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The military said on Thursday that it struck dozens of militant targets in Khan Younis, including a tunnel shaft from which fighters had launched an attack. It said two of the attackers were killed.

Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the October 7 attack that triggered the war, and took some 240 people hostage. An estimated 138 hostages remain in Gaza, mostly soldiers and civilian men, after 105 were freed during a ceasefire in late November.

A built-up refugee camp inside Khan Younis was the childhood home of Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, and the group’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, as well as other Hamas leaders — though their current whereabouts are unknown.

Heavy fighting is also still underway in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, even after two months of heavy bombardment and encirclement by ground troops. The military said troops raided a militant compound, killing “a number” of fighters and uncovering a network of tunnels.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the latest reports from the battlefield.

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