Khan Younis, Dec 2: Israel pounded targets in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, intensifying a renewed offensive that followed a weeklong truce with Hamas and giving rise to renewed concerns about civilian casualties. At least 178 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed Friday morning, even as the United States urged ally Israel to do everything possible to protect civilians.
“This is going to be very important going forward,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday after meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Dubai, wrapping up his third Middle East tour since the war started. “It’s something we’re going to be looking at very closely.” Israel’s attacks Saturday were focused on the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza, where the military dropped leaflets the day before warning residents to leave. As of late Friday, however, there had been no reports of large numbers of people leaving, according to the United Nations.
“There is no place to go,” lamented Emad Hajar, who fled with his wife and three children from the northern town of Beit Lahia a month ago to seek refuge in Khan Younis. “They expelled us from the north, and now they are pushing us to leave the south.” Some 2 million people – almost Gaza’s entire population – are crammed into the territory’s south, where Israel urged people to relocate at the war’s start and has since vowed to extend its ground assault. Unable to go into north Gaza or neighbouring Egypt, their only escape is to move around within the 220-square-kilometre (85-square-mile) area.
In response to US calls to protect civilians, the Israeli military released an online map, but it has done more to confuse than to help. It divides the Gaza Strip into hundreds of numbered, haphazardly drawn parcels, sometimes across roads or blocks, and asks residents to learn the number of their location in case of an eventual evacuation. “The publication does not specify where people should evacuate to,” the UN office for coordinating humanitarian issues in the Palestinian territory noted in its daily report.
Israeli missile strike targets Syrian capital
An Israeli missile attack hit military sites in the vicinity of Syrian capital Damascus early Saturday, the latest in a spate of Israeli attacks against Syria, according to the media reports. Multiple explosions were heard in Damascus after midnight in what appeared to be a hostile missile attack. The state-owned Syrian TV later confirmed it was an Israeli missile attack on the vicinity of Damascus, as per reports. Meanwhile, the Syrian army said in a statement that around 1:35 a.m. local time, the “Israeli enemy” conducted an aerial attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, targetting some military points in the vicinity of Damascus. In recent years, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria, as well as convoys transporting weapons to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran. Israel sees Iran as its arch-enemy. (Agencies)
