Key Points
- Some of the most intense fighting for weeks is raging in both the north and south.
- Israeli operations in Rafah, which borders Egypt, have closed a main crossing point for aid.
- A foreign UN staff member was killed on Monday when a vehicle travelling to a hospital in Rafah was struck.
Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee again after around half of Gaza’s population took sanctuary there after being pushed south by fighting elsewhere.
Gaza’s health authority appealed for international pressure to reopen access via the southern border to allow in aid, medical supplies and fuel to power generators and ambulances.
The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no treatment and supplies and they cannot travel.
Gaza health authority
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago, Israeli forces pushed into an area where they claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago.
Attending a Memorial Day ceremony to mark Israel’s fallen soldiers in Jerusalem on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war against Hamas was a struggle to secure Israel’s “existence, liberty, security and prosperity”.
Our war of independence is not over yet.
Benjamin Netanyahu
In Rafah, Israel stepped up aerial and ground bombardments on the eastern areas of the city, killing people in an air strike on a house in the Brazil neighbourhood.
Palestinians search for bodies and survivors among the rubble of the Jabalia refugee camp. Source: AAP / Mohammed Saber
Residents said Israeli air and ground bombardments were intensifying and tanks had cut off the main north-south Salahuddin road dividing east of the city from the central area.
But the Norwegian Refugee Council aid agency said it was not set up to receive uprooted families, with no space to install toilet facilities or water points.
The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no treatment and supplies and they cannot travel.
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