UN chief warns of ‘new and dangerous phase’ of war as Israeli forces target eastern and southern neighbourhoods of Gaza City.
At least 61 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn on Thursday, including 19 aid seekers, medical sources told media, as residents report intensified military bombardment of the eastern and southern neighbourhoods of Gaza City.
The Israeli military has been preparing to take Gaza City, the enclave’s largest urban centre, despite international calls to reconsider the move over fears that the operation would cause significant casualties and displace the roughly one million Palestinians sheltering there.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was among those criticising the campaign, saying on Thursday that it “signals a new and dangerous phase” in the war.
“Expanded military operations in Gaza City will have devastating consequences. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, already exhausted and traumatised, would be forced to flee yet again, pushing families into even deeper peril,” he said, calling for accountability for the “endless catalogue of horrors”,
“This must stop,” he said, adding that the “catastrophe” in the enclave was “the result of deliberate decisions that defy basic humanity”.
In Gaza City, residents said families were fleeing their homes and most were heading towards the coast as Israeli forces bombarded the Shujayea, Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods.
No buildings remain standing in the southern part of Zeitoun as the Israeli ground operation has demolished more than 1,500 homes, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency.
Israeli officials have described Gaza City as the last stronghold of Hamas.
‘Enforced disappearances’
The Israeli military said in a statement that it was continuing to operate throughout Gaza to target fighters and their infrastructure.
The military said on Thursday that it had killed three fighters in the past day without saying how it had identified the individuals.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that those killed across Gaza on Thursday included a woman and her child sheltering in a tent camp for displaced people in Khan Younis.
Meanwhile, UN rights experts voiced alarm at reports of “enforced disappearances” of starving Palestinians seeking food at distribution sites run by the US- and Israeli-backed GHF, urging Israel to end the “heinous crime”.
The seven independent experts said in a joint statement that they had received reports that a number of individuals, including one child, had been “forcibly disappeared” after going to aid distribution sites in Rafah in southern Gaza.
“Reports of enforced disappearances targeting starving civilians seeking their basic right to food is not only shocking, but amounts to torture,” said the experts, who are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the UN itself.
“Using food as a tool to conduct targeted and mass disappearances needs to end now.”
In response, the GHF said it had found no evidence of “enforced disappearances” at its aid sites.
According to the AFP news agency, the GHF said in response to the experts’ statement: “We operate in a war zone where serious allegations exist against all parties operating outside our sites. But inside GHF facilities, there is no evidence of enforced disappearances.”
New famine deaths
With the enclave in the grips of a humanitarian crisis, the Gaza Ministry of Health also said on Thursday that four more people, including two children, had died of malnutrition and starvation in the enclave, raising hunger-related deaths to 317 people, including 121 children, since the war started.
“The scene on the ground is quite heartbreaking,” media’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“Families are still lining up in front of soup kitchens for hours under the scorching heat, often to return to their temporary shelters empty-handed,” he said.
“Others are risking their lives to travel to distribution points to seek food aid.”
Israel’s military campaign has devastated the territory and displaced most of the roughly two million Palestinians there.
It started after Hamas’s October 2023 attacks on Israel, which killed 1,139 people with another 251 taken captive. Most of the captives have since been released through diplomatic negotiations, although 50 remain in Gaza, of whom 20 are said to be alive.
Israel, meanwhile, has not responded publicly to Hamas’s acceptance of a proposal for a ceasefire that would allow the return of some of the captives.
Israeli officials have, however, insisted that they would only accept a deal that sees all of the captives released and Hamas’s surrender.
More than 62,900 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza, according to local health officials.
