Heavy battles in Gaza City on eve of new truce talks

GAZA:

Israeli forces in war-ravaged Gaza City pushed on with a major offensive on Tuesday that has again displaced Palestinians, as UN experts said children were dying in a “starvation campaign”.

Troops, tanks and fighter jets swooped on Gaza’s biggest urban area on the eve of new contacts in Qatar aiming for an eventual hostage-prisoner exchange and a truce in the war raging into its 10th month.

CIA director William Burns and Israel’s Mossad chief David Barnea are due to travel to Qatar on Wednesday, after Burns held talks with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo.

Hamas, whose October 7 attack triggered the war, has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately escalating fighting in Gaza City and Rafah, in the territory’s south, to thwart an agreement.

The Islamist group’s Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh said he had made “urgent contact” with mediators, warning that the “catastrophic consequences” of the latest battles could “reset the negotiation process to square one”.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, described the fighting in Gaza City in recent days as “the most intense in months”.

Militants were fighting with rockets, mortars and explosives, it said.

After almost two weeks of battles in Gaza City’s eastern Shujaiya district, Israeli forces have extended the fighting into the city’s east, west and south.

Residents reported helicopter strikes, “explosions and numerous gun battles” in the city’s southwest.

Israel’s military said it was pursuing Palestinian militants in Gaza City, six months after it said it had dismantled Hamas’s “military framework” in the territory’s north.

Aircraft struck the city as troops were engaged in “close-quarters combat”, seizing weapons and destroying tunnels, the military said, reporting “dozens” of militants killed.

The United Nations said tens of thousands of civilians have been affected by the surge in fighting since the first of three evacuation orders for Gaza City was declared on June 27.

Thousands were seen marching down dusty roads past bombed-out buildings, with mothers carrying babies and others packing belongings onto donkey carts.