BarcelonaThe Israeli army reported on Thursday that it already controls 40% of the city of Gaza, after a land offensive on August 10 launched in the capital of the Palestinian enclave, with constant bombings, which have resulted in hundreds of deaths and left thousands of people without a house. “The operation will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days,” said military spokesman Effie Defrin in a video message. Among the neighborhoods that said they are under Israeli control is Zeitoun and Sheikh Radwan, and Israeli troops are a few kilometers from the city center.
Israel declared the city of Gaza, north of the Strip, a combat area last week. Some parts of the city are already considered “red areas”, where they have been ordered to the Palestinians to evacuate.
A correspondent from Al-Jazeera to Ciutat de Gaza explained that most people are forced to move continuously inside the capital. “They move from one area to another that is less dangerous, but is still within the reach of Israeli military fire, air attacks and bombings,” he says. He adds: “Instead of issuing large-scale forced displacement orders, the strong bombing, with heavy artillery, aerial attacks and drone attacks, it is pushing people to move because they eliminate their neighborhoods.” Give the example of the people who moved to the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood waiting for it to be a safer area, although it was bombed on Wednesday: “They have been forced to move once again, just a week after it was first done.”
Today, at least 69 Palestinians have died of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, of which 39 were in the capital, according to Al-Jazeera, citing hospital sources. Of the total victims, at least 14 have been killed while trying to gain humanitarian aid, a pattern that has continued to repeat since the basic assistance distribution of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF, by the abbreviations in English), controlled by Israel and the United States.
“This time I will not leave my house, I want to die here. Dozens of thousands of people who left their home have been killed by Israel, so why worry?” He tells the Reuters Um Nader agency, who lives in the city of Gaza. Residents said that Israel has bombed the Zeitoun, Sabra, Tuffah and Shejaia districts from the ground and air. The tanks have entered the eastern part of Sheikh Radwan, northwest of the city center, and have destroyed houses and fires in tents camps.
“Even if Israeli occupation emits warnings, there are no places that can accommodate civilians; there are no alternative places where people can go,” also laments Reuters Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Civil Emergency Service.
Much of the city of Gaza was devastated during the first weeks of the war, between October and November 2023. Before the war, about one million people lived, and it is believed that hundreds of thousands returned, especially since Israel ordered the expulsion of the population from other areas and threw offensives elsewhere in the strip.
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