© Reuters. Security personnel walk at the United Nations Security Council chamber before a meeting to vote on a proposal to demand that Israel and Hamas allow aid access to the Gaza Strip – via land, sea and air routes – and set up U.N. monitoring of the humanitaria
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By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli forces signalled they were widening their ground offensive with a new push into central Gaza on Friday, as the U.N. Security Council was expected to vote on a resolution to increase humanitarian aid to stave off the threat of famine.
As hopes faded for an imminent breakthrough in talks this week in Egypt aimed at getting warring Israel and Hamas to agree to a new truce, air strikes, artillery bombardments and fighting were reported across the Palestinian enclave.
Israel’s military on Friday ordered residents of Al-Bureij, in central Gaza, to move south immediately, indicating a new focus of the ground assault that has already devastated the north of the Strip and made a series of incursions in the south.
Some residents packed up donkey carts and left, but there was no immediate sign of large numbers from Al-Bureij joining the hundreds of thousands fleeing other areas.
“Where should we go to? There is no place safe,” Ziad, a medic and father of six, told Reuters by phone. “They ask people to head to (the central Gaza city of) Deir Al-Balah, where they bomb day and night.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has vowed to eradicate Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, after the group’s fighters launched a cross-border raid into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
But the soaring death toll during the Israeli military campaign of retaliation has drawn increasing international criticism, even from staunch ally the United States.
In its latest update on casualties, Gaza’s health ministry said 20,057 Palestinians had been killed and 53,320 wounded in Israeli strikes since Oct. 7.
“Israel’s indiscriminate strikes on Gaza have turned the north of the Strip into a pile of rubble,” medical charity MSF said in a post on X. “In Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, south Gaza, the dead and wounded continue to arrive almost every day… Nowhere is safe.”
The Israeli military has expressed regret for civilian deaths but has blamed Iran-backed Hamas for operating in densely populated areas or using civilians as human shields, an allegation the group denies.
Israel says 140 of its soldiers have been killed since it launched its ground incursion into Gaza on Oct. 20.
UNRELENTING WAR
In the latest accounts of fighting on Friday, residents reported Israeli tank shelling of eastern areas of Al-Bureij.
Israeli forces have previously engaged with Hamas gunmen on the edges of Al-Bureij but have yet to thrust deeper into the built-up area, which grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.
In the south, at least four civilians were killed in an air strike on a car in Rafah, a Palestinian rescue worker said. A boy, his face covered in blood, and a girl, were carried away from the scene, video showed. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Hamas-affiliated Shehab news agency reported heavy shelling and air strikes on Jabalia al-Balad and Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza, and said Israeli vehicles were trying to advance from the western side of Jabalia amid the sound of gunfire.
Reports in Palestinian media and footage shared by Gazans on social media showed bodies scattered in the street and some buried under rubble around the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military said in a statement its air force destroyed a long-range missile launch site in Juhor ad-Dik, central Gaza, from which, it said, “recent launches into Israeli territory were carried out” – a possible reference to an attack on Tel Aviv on Thursday.
The war in Gaza has fuelled tensions at other regional faultlines.
Israel has repeatedly traded fire with Iranian-backed Hezbollah across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and Houthi militants of Yemen, who are also backed by Iran, have attacked ships in the lower Red Sea, increasing the risks of trade disruption.
Around the Al Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, there were calls for worshippers to attend Friday prayers outside in defiance of orders that for weeks have limited access to the flashpoint site to women and the elderly.
Islam’s third holiest site, built on ground revered by Jews who know it as Temple Mount, has long been at the heart of tensions between Jews and Muslims.
Some mosques in East Jerusalem closed their doors on Friday and urged people to go to Al Aqsa and pray at the gates of the mosque “to break the siege”.
Police fired tear gas to disperse small groups of youths who gathered near the Old City and at mosques in East Jerusalem but police also distributed footage showing worshippers arriving calmly.
UN AND CAIRO TALKS
Negotiations continued on Thursday to try to avoid a U.S. veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution, drafted by the United Arab Emirates, that would demand that Israel and Hamas allow “the use of all land, sea and air routes to and throughout the entire Gaza” for humanitarian aid deliveries.
Israel said 5,405 aid trucks – carrying food, water and medical supplies – have entered Gaza since the start of the war. Aid groups say only a fraction of what is needed is coming in. A report by a U.N.-backed body said on Thursday the risk of famine is growing every day.
Meanwhile, talks in Egypt had yet to find common ground on a humanitarian ceasefire, but were closer to finding agreement on speeding up aid deliveries, two Egyptian security sources said.
A group representing families of Gaza hostages said on Friday that one captive – 73-year-old Gadi Haggai, a U.S.-Israeli dual national – had died in captivity. It did not give details or say how the information was obtained.
Before the statement about Haggai, Israel’s official count was that of 129 hostages still in Gaza, 21 had died in captivity.
