- ‘Nowhere is safe’ – UN raises alarm
Days after the week-long truce collapsed on Friday, Israeli Tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and bulldozers have entered the southern part of the Gaza Strip near Khan Younis, with an Israeli commander claiming the army had almost completed its mission in the north.
This is as the Israel Defence Forces released a screen grab from a video of soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Also, Israeli military vehicles were seen on the southern section of the main north-to-south road in Gaza, “firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area”, a witness, Moaz Mohammed, told the AFP news agency.
So far, the Israelis had largely captured the northern half of Gaza in November, and after a week-long truce collapsed on Friday, they have swiftly pushed deep into the southern half.
Hamas ally, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, told Reuters that its fighters engaged in fierce clashes with Israeli soldiers north and east of Khan Younis, Gaza’s main southern city, even as Israeli tanks have driven into Gaza across the border and cut off the main north-south route, according to residents.
On its part, the Israeli military (IDF) said the central road out of Khan Younis to the north “constitutes a battlefield” and was now shut.
Also, the UN has expressed fears of what lies ahead for Gaza. Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said that “an even more hellish scenario” looms in Gaza in which humanitarian aid simply grinds to a halt.
“The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist,” Hastings said. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go.”
At the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres appealed to Israel to avoid further action that would make the already dire humanitarian situation in Hamas-run Gaza worse and to spare civilians from more suffering.
On Monday, the White House said the United States (US) might establish a naval task force to escort commercial ships in the Red Sea. This comes a day after three vessels were struck by missiles fired by Iranian-back Houthis in Yemen.
National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan said the US has been in active conversations with allies about setting up the escorts though nothing is finalised, describing it as a “natural” response to that sort of incident, Associated Press reports.
On Sunday, ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck three commercial ships, while a U.S. warship shot down three drones in self-defence during an hours-long assault, the U.S. military said. It marked an escalation in a series of maritime attacks in the Middle East linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
Jake Sullivan told reporters: “We are in talks with other countries about a maritime taskforce of sorts involving the ships from partner nations alongside the United States in ensuring safe passage.”
He noted similar task forces are used to protect commercial shipping elsewhere, including off the coast of Somalia. The central road out of Khan Younis ‘constitutes a battlefield’, says the IDF; the UN says that ‘an even more hellish scenario’ looms for Gaza
