On 2 December, Israeli forces fired artillery on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip and the Israeli border area. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Ilan Assayag Gini ** Agency).
The Israeli military said on the 3rd that the Israeli army has expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and has launched combat operations in the southern Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said it was exchanging fire with Israeli forces near the southern town of Khan Younis.
Israeli spokesman Daniel Hajari said at a news conference that night that the Israeli ground offensive was expanding to "all areas of the Gaza Strip."
The ground offensive is directed towards southern Gaza.
IDF Chief of Staff Hezi Al-Halevi went to the Gaza Strip on 3 March to inspect combat units. He said that the Israeli army has killed many Hamas commanders in the northern Gaza Strip in the past two days, and began an operation in the southern Gaza Strip on the morning of 2 July.
Israeli military radio reported on the same day that the Israeli army launched a ground operation north of Khan Younis.
Khan Younis is the second largest city in the Gaza Strip. After the outbreak of large-scale clashes between Hamas and Israel on October 7, the Israeli army launched a large-scale attack on the Gaza Strip, forcing a large number of people living in the northern Gaza Strip to seek refuge here. On the 3rd, Israeli troops dropped leaflets in Khan Younis and its surrounding areas, demanding that the local people immediately evacuate the area.
People gather in front of a bombed building in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on December 1. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Rizek Abduljawad).
The Associated Press quoted Khan Younis resident Hekmat Zidra as saying that a neighbor had been warned that the building would be bombed. "We told them (Israel), 'We have nothing here, why destroy it?'However, the house was still bombed.
Seven days after a brief ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, fighting resumed in the Gaza Strip. In the past few days, the Israeli army has been bombing targets in the southern Gaza Strip with air strikes in preparation for advancing ground operations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on the 2nd that the Israeli army will expand its ground operations in the Gaza Strip until all objectives are achieved. He has instructed the Wehrmacht to resume fighting "with increasing intensity".
It was the sound of artillery all night".
Hamas** office staff said on the 3rd that the Israeli army's attacks on the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours have killed at least 700 Palestinians. Hundreds of people are still trapped under the rubble waiting for rescue, and more and more are left behind.
Another Palestinian source told Xinhua News Agency that the Israeli army launched airstrikes on the Buraij refugee camp and Nusailit refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip in the early morning of the 3rd, killing at least 32 people.
On December 1, in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, people fled their homes after Israeli forces resumed military operations. Xinhua News Agency (photo by Yasser Cudi).
Nabil Gandur, a resident of the Gaza Strip, told Reuters that he would go to Rafah with his family on the evening of the 3rd, and that this was their fifth move since the conflict began on October 7. "We don't see any safe places. But what else can we do but move?We still have children, and there is gunfire all night here. ”
The health department of the Gaza Strip said that as of the 3rd, the Israeli army's military operations in the Gaza Strip have caused more than 1550,000 Palestinians died, 4More than 10,000 people were injured. The Israeli side said that about 1,200 Israelis died in the clashes.
The United Nations estimates that 1.8 million** of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have been left homeless, most of them concentrated in the southern Gaza Strip, and nearly one million are currently taking refuge in United Nations aid facilities.
Where is "safe" in Gaza?
Following Hamas's raids and seizures of large numbers of military and civilian targets in Israel from the Gaza Strip on 7 October, Israeli forces continued to carry out air strikes and ground operations in the Gaza Strip, while demanding that all residents of the northern Gaza Strip withdraw to the south on the grounds of military operations.
Imad Hajar fled from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south a month ago. "We have nowhere to go, they (Israel) drove us away from the north [of the Gaza Strip] and are now asking us to leave the south," he told the Associated Press. ”
Halimah Abdul-Rahman said: "The Israelis told you to go to this place, and then they bombed it. The fact is that there is no longer any safe place in the Gaza Strip. ”
This is a photograph of displaced Palestinians at a hospital in Deir al-Bailah in the Gaza Strip on December 3. Xinhua News Agency.
According to Reuters, Israeli tanks have cut Khan Younis' main road to the central city of Deir al-Bairah, dividing the Gaza Strip into three, namely the north, the central and the south. The Israeli army wants to drive more than 2 million people in the Gaza Strip to what Israel calls a "safe zone" in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, or in the Mediterranean coastal town of Mawasi.
The "safe zone" in Mawasi is only a few square kilometres in size and lacks the infrastructure to accommodate a large population. More than a dozen organizations, including UN agencies and international charities, had previously issued a joint statement opposing the unilateral establishment of "safe zones".
End-Producer: Yan Junyan Jiang Guopeng.
Reporter: Wang Zhuolun, Lv Yingxu, Liu Weijian, Wang Hongbin, Chen Lixi.
*: Xinhua International Headlines.