Written by Nidal al-Mughrabi
Cairo (Reuters) – Israeli tanks moved deep into the western Rafah area, amid the worst night of shelling from the air, ground and sea, forcing many families to flee their homes and tents under cover of darkness, residents said on Thursday.
Residents say that Israeli forces have pressed on to the Al-Mawasi neighborhood in Rafah near the sea, which has been designated as a humanitarian zone in all announcements and maps published by the Israeli army since it began its offensive in Rafah in May.
The Israeli army denied in a statement that it had launched strikes in the Al-Mawasi area.
Israel said the attack was aimed at ending Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah, a city that sheltered more than a million people before the start of the latest war. Most of those people have now moved north towards Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it was continuing “intelligence, targeted operations” in Rafah, and said that soldiers had found weapons the previous day, killing Palestinian gunmen in close combat.
Over the past day, the military said it hit 45 airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, including military buildings, terrorists, rocket launchers and tunnels.
Israel has decided to remain silent until Hamas is eliminated, and most of Gaza is in ruins. But Hamas has shown resilience, with militants resurging to fight in areas where the Israeli army had previously declared defeat and retreated.
CEASEFIRE PROPOSAL
The group accepted the new American proposal to stop fighting but made some amendments, confirming its position that any agreement must guarantee an end to the war, a requirement that Israel still rejects.
Israel described Hamas’s response to the new US peace proposal as a complete rejection. But efforts to reach an agreement are still ongoing, according to mediators Qatar and Egypt, with the support of the United States.
Since a brief week-long truce in November, repeated attempts to arrange a cease-fire have failed, with Hamas insisting on a permanent end to the war and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas escalated the war when militants stormed from the Israeli-besieged Gaza into southern Israel during a lightning strike last October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to the detention center, according to Israeli figures.
Israel’s invasion and bombing of Gaza since then has killed at least 37,000 people, according to the territory’s health ministry. Thousands more are feared buried under the rubble, and most of the 2.3 million people left homeless.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi. Additional reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Gareth Jones)
