Deadly Israeli strikes hit central Gaza, tanks increase bombardment in Rafah

Rafah: Israeli air strikes hit the Nuseirat refugee camp and the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza overnight on Thursday, AFP reported.

The attack killed at least three people and injured more than a dozen others, according to health officials and medics.

Israeli tanks in southern Gaza’s Rafah stepped up bombardment, forcing more people there to flee north.

Residents said the tanks moved into five neighbourhoods after midnight. Heavy shelling and gunfire hit the tents of displaced families in the Al-Mawasi area, further to the west of the coastal enclave, they said.

Some eight months into the war, there has been no sign of let up in the fighting as efforts by international mediators, backed by the United States, have failed to persuade Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire.

Twelve Palestinians were also killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of citizens and merchants in the south of the Gaza Strip, medical sources told news agency Reuters on Wednesday.

Medics and local Palestinian media said eight Palestinians were killed in Al-Mawasi and many families fled north in panic.

Residents said Israeli army forces blew up several homes in western Rafah. Over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population had sought shelter in Rafah before last month, when Israel began its ground offensive and forced most of the population to head northwards.

Some United Nations and Palestinian figures have put the number of those still remaining there at under 100,000.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman on Wednesday appeared to question the stated goal of destroying the Hamas militant group in Gaza in a rare public rift between the country’s political and military leadership.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel will pursue the fight against Hamas, the group running the besieged Gaza Strip, until its military and governing capabilities in the Palestinian territory are eliminated. But with the war now in its ninth month, frustration has been mounting with no clear end or postwar plan in sight.

“This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear — it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military spokesperson, told Israel’s Channel 13 TV.

“Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people — whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”

Netanyahu’s office responded by saying that the country’s security Cabinet, chaired by the prime minister, “has defined the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities as one of the goals of the war.

The Israeli military, of course, is committed

to this.”