Israel presses operation in Gaza’s north

Gaza City: Israeli air strikes pounded parts of Gaza’s biggest city on Thursday, Hamas said, after Israel’s military declared an end to its operation in an eastern district that saw Gaza City’s heaviest combat in months.

The upsurge in fighting, bombardment and displacement followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in late June that “the war in its intense phase is about to end”.

It also came as talks were held in the Gulf emirate of Qatar towards a truce and hostage release deal after more than nine months of war.

Gaza’s ruling Hamas Islamists said troops had pulled back from Gaza City’s eastern district of Shujaiya leaving behind “more than 300 residential units and more than 100 businesses destroyed.”

Witnesses on Thursday said tanks and troops had moved into other Gaza City areas, and clashes between Israeli forces and militants were occurring. Explosions, artillery shelling and gunfire could be heard, they said. Smoke rose over parts of the city, according to AFP correspondents.

Hamas on Thursday reported 45 air strikes in the Gaza City area, as well as in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where Netanyahu had said the intense phase of the war was nearing its conclusion.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead. Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,345

people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from Gaza’s health ministry.

The latest toll included 50 new deaths over the previous 24 hours, it said.

Israel’s military saw Rafah as the last stronghold of Hamas and in January said the militants’ “military framework” in Gaza’s north had been dismantled, after bombardment and fighting devastated the area early in the war.

Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, a goal whose attainability has been questioned by critics both in Israel and abroad. Israel’s military said on Wednesday it had completed its mission in

Shujaiya after two weeks that, AFPTV images show, left the area a grey, blasted-out wasteland.

The images showed Palestinians gathered around a destroyed and burned armoured vehicle beneath a blackened building on a street carpeted with rubble.