RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian militants ambushed Israeli troops in a dense Gaza City neighborhood, killing at least nine of them, media reported Wednesday, as Hamas put up stiff resistance in areas that Israel has isolated and pounded with airstrikes for over nine weeks.
The air and ground offensive has resulted in the deaths of over 18,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war. Nearly 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes, and much of the territory's north resembles a moonscape.
U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has repeatedly called on Israel to take greater measures to spare Palestinian civilians, even as it has blocked international calls for a cease-fire and rushed military aid to its close ally.
More than six weeks after Israeli soldiers invaded Gaza's north, ground troops are still locked in heavy combat with Palestinian fighters in and around Gaza City. Clashes raged overnight and into Wednesday in multiple areas, with especially heavy fighting in Shijaiyah, a dense neighborhood that was the scene of a major battle during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas.
“It’s terrifying. We couldn’t sleep,” Mustafa Abu Taha, a Palestinian agricultural worker who lives in the neighborhood, said by phone. “The situation is getting worse and we don’t have a safe place to go.”
Army Radio said troops who were searching a cluster of buildings in Shijaiyah on Tuesday lost communication with four soldiers who had come under fire, sparking fears of a possible abduction. When the other soldiers launched a rescue operation, they were ambushed with heavy gunfire and explosives.
Among the nine dead were Col. Itzhak Ben Basat, 44, the most senior officer to have been killed in the ground operation, and Lt. Col. Tomer Grinberg, a battalion commander.
The military confirmed the deaths but did not respond to a request for further comment. Several Israeli media outlets carried similar accounts of the battle.
Suffering in the south
Heavy rainfall overnight swamped tent camps in Gaza's south, where Israel has told people to seek refuge, even as that region has also come under repeated aerial bombardment.
Because of the fighting and Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the health care system and humanitarian aid operations have collapsed in large parts of the territory, and aid workers have warned of starvation and the spread of disease among displaced people.
Israeli strikes overnight hit two residential buildings in the southern province of Khan Younis, where Israeli ground forces had launched a new line of attack earlier this month.
A strike on a home near the main highway between Khan Younis and the southern border town of Rafah killed two boys, aged 2 and 8, a woman in her 80s and a woman in her 30s, according to Mohammed al-Beiyouk, a relative of the deceased. Another strike killed a baby and his grandfather, according to hospital records at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
The military rarely comments on individual strikes. Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames the high toll on Hamas because it conceals fighters, tunnels and weapons in residential areas.]
Biden blames far right, but most Israelis back war
Biden said Tuesday that he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” and that Netanyahu should change his government, which is dominated by hard-right parties.
But the offensive is being conducted by a war Cabinet that includes two politically centrist retired generals, and has overwhelming support among Israelis from across the political spectrum.
In Israel, attention is still focused on the atrocities carried out on Oct. 7, when some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and some 240 people were taken hostage, around half of whom remain in captivity.
There has been little media coverage or public discussion of the plight of civilians in Gaza, even as international outrage has continued to mount.
On Tuesday, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire. The nonbinding vote was symbolic, but served as a barometer of world opinion. None of the major powers joined Israel and the United States in their opposition.
Still, the U.S. has urged Israel to do more to reduce civilian casualties as the toll has continued to mount at a dizzying rate.
Over 18,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, whose counts from previous conflicts have tracked with Israeli and U.N. figures. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but says roughly two-thirds of the dead are women and minors.
At odds on postwar plans
Israel and the U.S. say any cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power would mean victory for the militant group, which has governed Gaza since 2007 and has pledged to destroy Israel. But the two allies disagree over what should happen if Hamas is defeated.
The U.S. hopes to revive the peace process, which ground to a halt more than a decade ago. It wants the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to also govern Gaza, which Hamas seized from it in 2007.
But President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the PA, is extremely unpopular, in part because of his security cooperation with Israel, and he has ruled out any return to Gaza outside of a solution to the conflict that creates a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu's government is firmly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo and Lidman from Tel Aviv, Israel.
