On Friday, Israeli forces clashed with Hamas in the north and centre of the Gaza Strip, while Khaled Meshaal, a senior official in Gaza, declared that the six-month-long battle with Israel would “break the enemy soon.” Israeli troops have mostly withdrawn from Gaza in preparation for an assault on the southern city of Rafah, where over one million Palestinians are taking shelter, but fighting has persisted in several areas.
Residents of the Al-Nusseirat camp in central Gaza reported that dozens of people were killed or injured in Israeli bombardment from air, land, and sea, which followed a surprise ground offensive the previous day. They also reported that houses and two mosques had been destroyed. Health officials earlier stated that six people were killed in strikes on the camp, while around 70 were wounded, including three Palestinian journalists.
In Gaza City, at least 25 people were killed, and several others were wounded in an Israeli air strike on the house in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood, according to Palestinian health officials. Gaza’s health ministry claimed that 89 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli military strikes in the space of 24 hours.
The Israel military (IDF) claimed that it was pursuing “a precise intelligence-based operation” against Hamas and their infrastructure in central Gaza, stating that “over the past day, IDF fighter jets struck over 60 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, including underground launch posts, military infrastructure, and sites in which armed Hamas operated. In parallel, IDF artillery struck Hamas infrastructure in the central Gaza Strip.”
Meshaal spoke at an event in Doha, Qatar, to mourn members of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh’s family killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Wednesday. “This is not the final round,” he said. “It is an important round on the path of liberating Palestine and defeating the Zionist project.”
According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 33,545 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli offensive, with most of the 2.3 million population displaced and much of the enclave left in ruins.
