Israel has bombed targets in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, according to a media report. According to aid workers, the situation for the civilian population is now unbearable. Israel has pumps to flood the Hamas tunnels, according to a US report.
The Israeli newspaper “Times of Israel” quoted Palestinian reports overnight that there were intense attacks by Israeli forces in the largest city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
Dozens of Israeli tanks had previously advanced into the southern Gaza Strip and were spotted near Khan Yunis, the newspaper reported. Eyewitnesses also saw armored personnel carriers and bulldozers.
“Unbearable suffering civilian population”
After the expansion of the Israeli military operation against the terrorist group Hamas to the south of the sealed-off coastal area, criticism of the army’s actions is growing in view of the suffering of the civilian population. Aid organizations speak of “horror” and “unbearable suffering for the civilian population.”
No one would feel safe if bombs were falling every ten minutes, spokesman for the UN children’s fund Unicef, James Elder, told the BBC on Monday.
According to the aid organization Doctors Without Borders, two hospitals in the south can no longer cope with the influx of patients. The organization said the Al-Aqsa Hospital and the Nasser Hospital were particularly affected.
Israel accuses Hamas of carrying out attacks from residential areas and hospitals and using civilians as shields.
WHO is said to have been asked to evacuate the camp
According to the organization, a medical camp run by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the south of the Gaza Strip had to be evacuated on Israeli orders. The army had warned that ground operations would make the camp inaccessible, the WHO said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a post on social media platform X, called on Israel to withdraw the order and take all measures to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and humanitarian facilities. The Israeli Ministry of Defense denied in a statement that it had asked the WHO to evacuate the warehouses.
“The truth is that we did not ask you to evacuate the warehouses,” Israel’s Civil Affairs Authority in the Occupied Territories (Cogat) said on the online service X, formerly Twitter. It said she had made this clear to the relevant UN representatives.
No total grid failure in Gaza
An Israeli army spokesman also denied another total failure of telecommunications services in the coastal strip. Army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told the US broadcaster CNN that night that he himself had seen live broadcasts by Palestinian propaganda people on TikTok. The networks may not be perfect, but there is no blackout in Gaza previously reported by the Palestinian company Paltel, the army spokesman said.
The Israeli army has activated an evacuation map that divides the Gaza Strip into hundreds of small zones to inform civilians about combat zones. However, critics complain that many people do not have electricity or internet to view the map. Many people don’t know how to deal with it either.
Israel attacks Hezbollah militia positions in Lebanon
Israel also reported attacks on Hezbollah militia positions in Lebanon. In response to shelling, fighter jets hit missile positions belonging to the Iran-backed Shiite militia, the Israeli army said on Tuesday night. “Terrorist infrastructure and a military site” were also targeted. They responded to shelling from Lebanon on targets in Israel the day before.
The military had previously said that three Israeli soldiers were slightly injured in the attacks. Hezbollah had claimed responsibility for an attack on Israeli soldiers on Monday night and for shelling other targets.
Pumps for flooding tunnels?
Meanwhile, according to a media report, Israel has assembled a system of large pumps that could flood the Islamist Hamas’ extensive network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip with seawater.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US government officials, it is not known whether the Israeli government plans to use this tactic. Israel has neither made a final decision nor ruled out such a plan, the officials were quoted as saying.
The Israeli armed forces completed the assembly of large seawater pumps north of the Al-Shati refugee camp in mid-November, it said. Each of at least five pumps could draw water from the Mediterranean and pump thousands of cubic meters of water per hour into the tunnels, flooding them within weeks, the newspaper reported. With such a tactic, Israel would be able to destroy the tunnels and drive the terrorists from their underground hideout, it said. On the other hand, it would threaten Gaza’s water supply, the US officials were quoted as saying.