Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
24-10-2024
JABALIA/ GAZA STRIP: Palestinians who fled from the Israeli ground offensive on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza have given harrowing accounts of the situation there.
One man told media that he saw streets strewn with bodies after being ordered to leave a shelter by Israeli forces, while a woman said some people left in such panic that they left their children behind.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees called for a temporary truce to enable safe passage for families still wishing to flee, while two local hospitals warned that they were running out of supplies.
The Israeli military said its troops were continuing operations against Hamas fighters while enabling the secure evacuation of civilians.
More than 400 people are reported to have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced since the military said it was launching a third offensive in the Jabalia area on 6 October, saying it was rooting out Hamas fighters who had regrouped there.
It came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Israel to try to revive the stalled diplomatic process for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal in the wake of last week’s killing by Israeli troops of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
After meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he told reporters that he wanted “to make sure that this is a moment of opportunity to move forward”.
Blinken also emphasized the need for Israel to take additional steps to increase and sustain the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
A man called Saleh said he had “endured a siege for 16 days” while sheltering with his family at Abu Hussein Primary School for Boys.
Medics and rescue workers said more than 20 people were killed in an Israeli air strike there last week. The Israeli military named on Tuesday 18 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters who it said were among the dead.
“The shelling grew closer and intensified each day, with Israeli forces advancing towards us. Today, we heard bombings very near… We feared for our lives,” Saleh said.
“We received messages via [Israeli] quadcopters urging us to evacuate, so we began to move under the watch of Israeli soldiers, who demanded we go towards either the south or west of Gaza… I had my grandmother with me, she was unable to move, like many others.”
Another man, Mohammed al-Danani, said he was at the same school and that he had “witnessed the bodies of martyrs on the streets” after complying with the evacuation order. Engy Abdel Aal said she had been in the Abu Rashid Pond area when quadcopters broadcast orders directing people to move towards the town of Beit Lahia, just north of the camp.
“The situation was incredibly difficult, no-one knew where to go. It’s tragic and catastrophic in every sense,” she said. “Some people had to flee without their children, leaving them behind in the school while they escaped with others.”
The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that it troops were “continuing combat in the Jabalia area, while enabling the secure evacuation of civilians from the combat zone”.
“As a result, thousands of civilians have been evacuated. Dozens of terrorists were arrested from among the civilians,” it said in a post on X that included a video showing crowds walking through damaged streets.
The military also said that troops “eliminated 10 terrorists that posed a threat and operated adjacent to them” in a single strike, without giving any details. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
