May 11, 2024
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian militants ambushed Israeli troops in a dense Gaza City neighborhood, killing at least nine of them, the military said Wednesday, as Hamas put up stiff resistance in areas that Israel has isolated and pounded with airstrikes for over two months.
The air and ground war has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and pushed nearly 85% of Gaza’s population from their homes. The United States has repeatedly called on Israel to take greater measures to spare 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 in the wake of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, 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.
Troops who were searching a cluster of buildings in Shijaiyah on Tuesday lost communication with four soldiers who had come under fire, the military said. 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.
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.
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.
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 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. The military says 115 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive.
On Tuesday, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire. The nonbinding vote was symbolic. None of the major powers joined Israel and the United States in their opposition.
Over 18,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to claims by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
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.
