Intense fighting raged Saturday in the Gaza city of Khan Yunis, the main theatre of conflict where the Israeli army is targeting the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas.
The unabated hostilities came a day after the UN’s International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that Israel must prevent possible acts of genocide in the conflict but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.
Tensions rose between Israel and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after Israel charged that several UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas attacks of October 7, leading some key donor countries to suspend funding.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Saturday that Israel wants to ensure the UN agency, with tens of thousands of staff in Gaza, “will not be a part of the day after” the bloodiest ever Gaza war.
Alarm has grown over the plight of civilians in Khan Yunis, the southern hometown of Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, the suspected mastermind of the October 7 attacks.
Witnesses reported more fierce fighting Saturday in the city, where the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory said “135 martyrs arrived at hospitals due to massacres throughout the night”.
The Hamas government’s press office reported “massive tank bombardment since the morning” targeting a refugee camp and the Nasser hospital.
Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said tens of thousands, including children, endured a night of incessant and cold rain.
The harsh weather threatened to cause the “spread of contagious diseases” and made the “humanitarian crisis worse for the two million displaced across the strip”, he said.
Suhaila Asfur, a displaced woman, told AFP her family was unable to sleep because of the heavy rain and said: “I don’t know what we will do tonight and where we will sleep”.
