Israel presses ahead with Gaza City assault, displaced Palestinians panic

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel's military said it had expanded operations in Gaza City on Friday and bombarded Hamas infrastructure, while displaced Palestinians traumatised by the advance said they had no means to flee.

"The situation is really bad. All night long, the tank was firing shells," said Palestinian Toufic Abu Mouawad, who left a camp for the displaced with nowhere else to go.

"I want to flee with the boys, the girls, the children. This is the situation that we are living in. It is a very tragic situation. We call on all the Arab countries and the people who have a good conscience to stand with us.”

ISRAELI FORCES ADVANCE ON CENTRAL GAZA CITY

Israeli forces control Gaza City's eastern suburbs and in recent days have been pounding the Sheikh Radwan and Tel Al-Hawa areas, from where they would be positioned to advance on central and western areas, where most of the population is sheltering.

The Gaza health authorities said 33 Palestinians had been killed in the last 24 hours.

On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it believed 350,000 people had left Gaza City since the start of September and that about 600,000 remained.

Satellite imagery from September 18, reviewed by Reuters, shows new tents appearing in the areas south of Gaza City after September 5. It also shows crowds of people on the Al Rashid road and what appear to be vehicles on the Salah al Din road.

In leaflets dropped over Gaza City, the military had told Palestinians they could use the newly reopened Salah al Din road to escape to the south.

The IDF said an airstrike had killed Mahmoud Yusuf Abu Alkhir, whom it identified as deputy head of military intelligence in Hamas’ Bureij Battalion. It said he had taken part in "terrorist attacks against Israeli troops and the state".

Hamas, the militant group administering Gaza, triggered the war when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli figures.

Families of the remaining 20 or so surviving hostages have been imploring Netanyahu to stop the offensive and instead negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas to free their loved ones.

ISRAELI PROTESTERS CALL FOR HOSTAGES' RELEASE

Dozens of protesters gathered on the Israeli side of the border, calling for an end to the war. They held banners or placards with slogans that included "Stop the genocide in Gaza" and "Free Gaza, isolate Israel".

The armed wing of Hamas said on Thursday that the hostages were distributed throughout the neighbourhoods of Gaza City.

"The start of this criminal operation and its expansion means you will not receive any captive, alive or dead," it said in a written statement.

Israel Katz, Israel's defence minister, said on X: "If Hamas does not release the hostages and disarm, Gaza will be destroyed and turned into a monument to the rapists and murderers of Hamas."

In almost two years of fighting, Israel's fierce offensive has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and demolished most of the structures in the tiny enclave, which is now gripped by hunger and even famine.

Israel says the extent of hunger has been exaggerated and that Hamas could end the war at once if it surrendered, freed the hostages, disarmed and disbanded.

Hamas says it will not disarm until a Palestinian state is established. Numerous attempts to mediate an end to the conflict have failed.

Displaced Palestinian Osama Awad said the Israeli shelling, bombing, airstrikes and naval bombardment were coming closer: "For one week, we have been living nights of horror."

It is a horror that most of Gaza's 2 million Palestinians have experienced over and over again in repeated Israeli onslaughts and multiple displacements.

All around Awad, children sat on top of piles of their families' meagre belongings while others moved a few possessions on carts.

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Tiffany Le in Beijing and Milan Pavicic on London; Writing by Michael Georgy)