Bombings and fighting in the Gaza Strip, rocket alert in northern Israel

Photo: Bashar Taleb Agence France-Presse Palestinians, including a young boy, center, check the damage caused by an Israeli strike the day before on a five-story building, next to a school housing displaced people, in Khan Yunis, in the southern Strip. Gaza, July 4.

The Israeli army on Thursday bombarded the Gaza Strip where fighting is raging in Shujaiya, in the north, and in Rafah, in the south, after an evacuation order in this region which prompted tens of thousands of Palestinians in a new exodus.

On Israel's northern border with Lebanon, exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, a powerful Islamist movement allied with Palestinian Hamas, raise fears of an extension of the war.

On Thursday, the army reported warnings of rockets and air incursions throughout northern Israel, as far as the occupied Golan Heights, a day after Hezbollah fire and the elimination by Israel of a its commanders.

Hezbollah claimed to have fired more than 200 rockets at several Israeli targets.

Nearly nine months after the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas claimed to have sent the mediating countries new “ideas” to end it, which Israel said it was “evaluating.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday that the war would only end once its objectives were “achieved”, including “the destruction of Hamas and the release of all hostages”. on October 7 during the attack carried out by the Palestinian Islamist movement against Israel.

Bombings and fighting continue unabated across the territory despite Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement on June 23 that the “intense” phase of the war was near.

Photo: Jack Guez Agence France-Presse A column of smoke rises after rockets fired from southern Lebanon hit the Upper Galilee region of northern Israel on July 4, 2024.

A third of the territory

After a new evacuation order issued Monday by the Israeli army, tens of thousands of Palestinians left areas of eastern Rafah and Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, thrown onto the roads in search for water, food and shelter.

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“We left but we don't know where to go. It’s very hard, it’s very hot and we have children with us,” testified Oum Malek Al-Najjar, a woman who left eastern Khan Younes.

< p>The largest city in the south of the Gaza Strip, from which the army withdrew in early April after a battle lasting several months, is now transformed into a field of ruins.

The call to evacuate, which concerns 250,000 people in a territory of 117 square kilometers, or a third of the Gaza Strip, is “the most important” since that addressed to the inhabitants of the north of Gaza in the first days of the war, the UN stressed.

On Thursday, fighting accompanied by explosions raged in the Chaboura camp in Rafah, according to Palestinian sources, while artillery fire was reported in Yabna, another Palestinian camp in the city, and in the east of Khan Younes.

Israel has not indicated whether there will be a new major operation in the south, but its evacuation orders are generally a preamble to intense fighting.

After advancing from the north, the army launched a ground operation on May 7 in the town of Rafah, which borders Egypt , then presented as the last stage of the war, which had pushed a million Palestinians to flee.

But in recent weeks, fighting has resumed in several regions that the army said it was in control.

On Thursday, the army announced that it had “eliminated dozens of terrorists and destroyed more than 50 terrorist targets” since the day before. It added that it would continue its operations, particularly underground, in Choujaiya, in the north, and carry out “targeted operations” in Rafah.

The army had launched on June 27 a ground operation in Shujaiya, an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, which resulted in the displacement, according to the UN, of 60,000 to 80,000 people.

Thursday , Israeli artillery fire targeted Shujaiya, where, according to Palestinian sources, fighting pitted soldiers against Palestinian fighters.

A bombardment left three dead in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, according to Civil Defense. Artillery fire was also reported in the central Gaza Strip.

“Our houses were razed”< /h2>

“We fled Shujaiya five days ago after being woken up by the sound of tanks. Our houses were razed,” said Oum Bashar al-Jamal, a 42-year-old woman sheltering in a stadium in Gaza City.

The war was started on October 7 by an attack carried out by Hamas commandos infiltrated into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count established from official Israeli data.

Of 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 116 are still being held in Gaza, among whom 42 are dead, according to the army.

In response, Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel. The Israeli offensive in Gaza has so far killed 37,953 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry.

The war has caused a humanitarian disaster in the besieged territory, where water and food are in short supply, aid is arriving in insufficient quantities and 1.9 million people, or 80 percent of the population, are now displaced, according to the UN.