Israeli tanks have pushed back into some areas of the northern Gaza Strip which they had left weeks ago, while warplanes have conducted air raids on Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians have sought refuge in the south of the territory, killing and wounding several people.
Residents reported an internet outage in the areas of Beit Hanoon and Jabalia in northern Gaza on Tuesday.
Tanks advanced into Beit Hanoon and surrounded some schools where displaced families have taken refuge, said the residents.
“Occupation soldiers ordered all families inside the schools and the nearby houses where the tanks had advanced to evacuate. The soldiers detained many men,” a resident of northern Gaza told Reuters via a chat app.
Beit Hanoon, home to 60,000 people, was one of the first areas targeted by Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza last October. Heavy bombardment turned most of Beit Hanoon, once known as “the basket of fruit” because of its orchards, into a ghost town comprising piles of rubble.
Many families who had returned to Beit Hanoon and Jabalia in recent weeks after Israeli forces withdrew, began moving out again on Tuesday because of the new raid, some residents said.
Palestinian health officials said Israel killed four people and wounded several others in one attack in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are sheltering and bracing for a planned Israeli ground offensive into the city, which borders Egypt.
After six months of fighting, there is still no sign of a breakthrough in US-backed talks led by Qatar and Egypt to clinch a ceasefire deal in Gaza, as Israel and Hamas stick to their mutually irreconcilable conditions.