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Israel continues its offensive across the Gaza Strip, focusing on the capital

The Israeli army has continued its offensive on the Gaza Strip, intensifying military operations in the enclave’s capital, Gaza City, whose residents were ordered to evacuate on Wednesday, and in the centre of the enclave, which also came under Israeli attack from the air and with artillery.

In Gaza City, north of the Strip, troops “continued their operational activities against terrorists holed up in UNRWA’s headquarters,” the army said in a statement.

“Over the past day, troops found a large quantity of weapons, including explosive drones, grenades, explosive devices, sniper rifles, mortar shells, rockets and RPGs in the headquarters area,” he said.

The army also said last week it had killed Hamas security chief Hassan Abu Kuiq and the commander of the Islamist group’s military intelligence team, Naser Mehanna, in the central region of the Strip, without elaborating.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli armed drones fired on homes in the Al Sabra neighborhood in the south of the city, causing an unknown number of casualties. With leaflets dropped from the air, Israel on Wednesday ordered the complete evacuation of Gaza City, warning that the capital “will remain a dangerous war zone.”

The targeted operation that the Israeli army launched two weeks ago in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shuja’iyya ended last night with the killing of 150 suspected fighters. From that neighborhood alone, about 80,000 residents were displaced, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). A Hamas official says “widespread destruction” has been left behind after the Israeli withdrawal.

Evacuees from the Gazan capital have had to head towards the centre of the enclave, where there is also no place to be safe: last night there were bombings in the Al Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps, as well as artillery attacks on the beaches of Madinat al Zahra and Nuseirat, according to Wafa.

On the other hand, the army reported that it continued to attack Rafah, in the far south of the enclave, with a “selective operation based on intelligence”, which ended with the death of “dozens of terrorists” and the destruction of tunnels. (EFE)