RAFAH: Israel has vowed to keep fighting in Gaza until it crushes Hamas after one of the deadliest single battles of the war for its soldiers, even as it faces mounting international calls for a cease-fire and unease on the part of its closest ally, the United States.
The ambush in Gaza City showed Hamas is still able to fight in some of the hardest-hit areas more than two and a half months into a massive air and ground war aimed at destroying its military capabilities. Israel has imposed a total siege on northern Gaza and flattened much of it, forcing most of the population to flee south several weeks ago.
Hamas' resilience has called into question whether Israel can defeat it without wiping out Gaza. Support for Hamas has surged among Palestinians — in part because of the militant group's stiff resistance to a far more powerful foe — while Israel's most important ally, the US, has expressed growing discomfort over civilian deaths in what is already one of the 21st century's most devastating military campaigns.
"We are continuing until the end, there is no question," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday. "I say this even given the great pain and the international pressure. Nothing will stop us."
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was set to visit Israel on Thursday. The US has pressed Israel to take greater measures to spare civilians, and President Joe Biden said earlier this week that Israel was losing international support because of its "indiscriminate bombing."
The ambush took place Tuesday in the dense Gaza City neighbourhood of Shijaiyah, which was also the scene of a major battle during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. The dead included two high-ranking officers. A total of 116 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, which began Oct. 27.
Heavy fighting has raged for days in Shijaiyah and other areas in and around eastern Gaza City that were encircled earlier in the war. Tens of thousands of people remain in the north despite repeated evacuation orders, saying they don't feel safe anywhere in Gaza or fear they may never return to their homes if they leave them.
Heavy civilian toll
Israel's air and ground assault, launched in response to Hamas' unprecedented attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, has killed more than 18,600 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble.
Nearly 1.9 million Palestinians have been driven from their homes, with most seeking refuge in the south, even as Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets in all parts of the territory, often killing women and children.
Residents reported Israeli airstrikes overnight in Rafah, the southernmost town along the Egyptian border. An Associated Press reporter saw 27 bodies brought into a local hospital early Thursday.
One woman burst into tears after recognizing the body of her child.
"They were young people, children, displaced, all sitting at home," Mervat Ashour said as she and others mourned their relatives. "There were no resistance fighters, rockets, or anything."
A neighbour who helped pull bodies from the rubble of one strike said there were no survivors. "We saw people in pieces," Hassan Abdulaal said.
New evacuation orders issued as troops pushed into the southern city of Khan Younis earlier this month have pushed UN-run shelters to the breaking point and forced people to set up tent camps in even less hospitable areas. Heavy rain and cold in recent days have compounded their misery, swamping tents and forcing families to crowd around fires to keep warm.
Israel has sealed Gaza off to all but a trickle of humanitarian aid, and UN agencies have struggled to distribute it since the offensive expanded to the south because of fighting and road closures. Almost no aid has reached the north since the start of the war.
Disease spreading
Samar Mohammed, a 38-year-old teacher, fled with her family to a friend's home in Rafah. They have been told they could pay thousands of dollars in bribes to get out, "but haven't found anyone we trust not to steal from us", she said.
The UN warned the spread of diseases — including meningitis, jaundice and upper respiratory tract infections — had intensified. Fewer than one-third of Gaza's hospitals are partly functioning, the UN says, and Hamas authorities said vaccines for children have run out, with "catastrophic health repercussions."
The World Health Organization called for the "protection of all people inside" Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza. The Hamas-controlled health ministry said Israeli forces had opened fire on wards of the facility. The army has yet to comment, but Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals, schools, mosques and vast tunnel systems beneath them as military bases -- charges it denies.
Major Keren Hajioff, an Israeli military spokesperson, on Thursday, said troops had found "weapons depots and tunnels in multiple schools", as well as a rocket-propelled grenade training facility "inside a mosque in Jabalia."
Militants have continued to fire rockets from Gaza towards Israeli territory. The Palestinian health ministry said 10 people have been killed since Tuesday when Israeli forces began raiding Jenin, where the Israeli military says it has seized weapons and dismantled explosives laboratories, tunnel shafts and other military facilities.
In Israel, the army is coming under growing pressure to limit troop deaths -- it says 116 have been killed in Gaza -- and secure the release of remaining hostages. Israeli authorities say 118 hostages are still believed to be alive in Gaza after their capture by militants on October 7. Some were released during an exchange for Palestinian prisoners during a week-long truce last month.
Other captives have been found dead. Tanzania on Thursday confirmed the death of one of its nationals, a student, killed after his capture on October 7. Smoke rose above the hills over southern Lebanon on Thursday after Israeli bombardment. Lebanese Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces have been engaged in regular exchanges of fire since the Israel-Hamas war began.
'Darkest chapter'
CNN reported, citing US intelligence, that nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions used by Israel in Gaza since October 7 have been unguided, which can pose a greater threat to civilians.
International pressure is mounting on Israel to better protect non-combatants. This week, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a non-binding resolution for a ceasefire. While Washington voted against it, the resolution was supported by allies Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In a rare joint statement, the three countries said they were "alarmed at the diminishing safe space for civilians in Gaza."
The UN estimates 1.9 million out of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced. The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said on Wednesday that Gazans were "facing the darkest chapter of their history."
He said they are "now crammed into less than one-third" of the territory, and hinted there could be an exodus to Egypt, "especially when the border is so close."
Cold wintery rain has lashed the makeshift tents where the homeless struggle to survive without sufficient food, drinking water, medicines or fuel for cooking. "Where do we migrate to? Our dignity is gone. Where do women relieve themselves? There are no bathrooms," said Bilal al-Qassas, 41, who fled to the southern city of Rafah which has become a vast camp.
Despite the needs, aid distribution has largely stopped in most of Gaza, except on a limited basis in the Rafah area, the UN says.
Rising support for Hamas
Israel might have hoped that the war and its hardships would turn Palestinians against Hamas, hastening its demise, but as with previous rounds of violence, it seems to be having the opposite effect.
A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 44% of respondents in the occupied West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from just 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up from 38% three months ago.
That's still a minority in both territories. But even many Palestinians who do not share Hamas' commitment to destroying Israel and oppose its attacks on civilians see it as resisting Israel's decades-old occupation of lands they want for a future state.
The poll meanwhile showed overwhelming rejection of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with nearly 90% saying he must resign. The 88-year-old leader's administration, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is widely seen by Palestinians as a corrupt and autocratic accomplice to the occupation because it works with Israel to suppress Hamas and other militant groups.
The US wants Abbas' internationally recognized Palestinian Authority to also govern Gaza, which it lost to Hamas in a week of street fighting in 2007. The US also wants to revive the long-defunct peace process to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu's government is firmly opposed to Palestinian statehood and has said it will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza.
Hamas' exiled leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, said late Wednesday that any plans for Gaza that do not involve Hamas are an "illusion and mirage," though he said the group is open to another truce.
Israelis remain strongly supportive of the war and see it as necessary to prevent a repeat of Oct. 7, when Hamas burst through the country's vaunted defences. Palestinian militants attacked communities across southern Israel that day, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 hostages.
Around half the hostages, mostly women and children, were released last month during a weeklong cease-fire in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
(With inputs from AP and AFP)