Gazans flee Israeli assault that Hamas warns could threaten ceasefire bid
CAIRO − Gaza City residents fled under Israeli fire as tanks thrust deeper into the heart of the city on Tuesday, the second day of a stepped-up military offensive that Palestinian militant group Hamas said could jeopardize cease-fire talks.
The armed wings of Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad said fighters battled Israeli forces in fierce clashes with machine guns, mortar fire and anti-tank missiles on Gaza City's front lines and that they had killed and wounded Israeli soldiers.
Israel's military did not comment on casualties but said its soldiers were engaged in close-quarter combat with militants and had taken more than 150 fighters out of action in the last week and destroyed booby-trapped buildings and explosives.
More:Israeli tanks move on Gaza City in major attack as civilians seek shelter
The fighting has unfolded as senior U.S. officials were in the region to push for a cease-fire after Hamas made concessions last week. But the renewed campaign threatened talks at a crucial time and could bring negotiations "back to square one," Hamas quoted leader Ismail Haniyeh as saying on Monday.
Footage circulated on social media showed families packed onto donkey carts and in the backs of trucks piled with mattresses and other belongings making their way through the city's streets to flee areas under Israeli evacuation orders.
"Gaza City is being wiped out, this is what is happening. Israel is forcing us to leave homes under fire," Um Tamer, a mother of seven, told Reuters via a chat app.
She said it was the seventh time her family had fled their house in Gaza City, located in the north of the enclave and one of Israel's first targets at the start of the war in October.
More:Pregnant women in Gaza Strip face starvation, no anesthesia after months of war
"We can't take it anymore, enough of death and humiliation. End the war now," she said.
Israeli tanks pushed deeper into several districts including Shejaia, Sabra and Tel Al-Hawa, where residents have reported some of the fiercest fighting since the start of the war.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said all of its medical clinics were out of service in Gaza City because of Israeli evacuation orders, which have pushed thousands of people westward towards the Mediterranean coast and to the south.
Cease-fire hopes
Across Gaza, Israeli strikes killed nearly 30 Palestinians on Tuesday, health officials in the Hamas-run territory said.
Israeli airstrikes killed six people in a house in Gaza City, nine in two houses in Al-Nuseirat and Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and three people in Rafah on the Gaza Strip's southern edge, they said.
Two Israeli strikes in Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza Strip killed at least 11 people, several of them children, medics said.
The Palestinian death toll in the nine-month-long Israeli military offensive has now reached 38,243, Hamas-controlled Gaza health officials said in their latest update on Tuesday.
More:Amid Gaza War protests, this website profiled students and accused them of 'hatred'
The war was triggered when fighters led by Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct.7, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
Hopes among Gazans of a pause in the fighting had revived after Hamas last week accepted a key part of a U.S. cease-fire proposal. But gaps still remain between the two sides, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday.
Cease-fire negotiations will resume in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday then return to Cairo on Thursday after talks Tuesday between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and CIA Director William Burns, Egypt's state-affiliated Al-Qahera News TV said.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the deal must not prevent Israel from resuming fighting until it meets its war objectives, including wiping out Hamas as a threat.
A Palestinian official close to the mediation efforts said Israel must make the next move.
"It is all up to Netanyahu now," the official said on Tuesday. "Hamas made its position clear and showed flexibility enough to make a deal possible, but even the Israelis are saying it is all up to Netanyahu and whether he wants a deal."