Residents reported heavy aerial and tank fire Saturday across Khan Younis, including near two hospitals in the southern Gaza city that’s the focus of Israel’s ground offensive against Hamas, as bad weather hit displaced Palestinians seeking refuge further north in the enclave.
Hamas said its fighters fired a missile against an Israeli tank in southwest Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said it killed at least 11 gunmen who were trying to plant explosives near troops and others firing rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at soldiers in Khan Younis.
In a ruling on Friday, the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians and do more to help civilians but it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
An estimated 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, including Israeli security forces and civilians, along with foreign nationals, according to the Israeli government. About 250 others were taken hostage. Israel responded with tremendous force in Gaza, saying its attacks are intended to take out Hamas and its supporters, not civilians.
Israel says 220 soldiers have died since it launched its ground offensive. It says it has killed at least 9,000 Gaza militants so far, a figure that Hamas has dismissed.
On Saturday, health officials in Gaza said at least 26,257 Palestinians have been killed (a tally that doesn’t differentiate between civilians and Hamas fighters) and 64,797 injured in Israeli strikes since Oct. 7. A Health Ministry statement also said 174 Palestinians were killed and 310 injured in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.
Joan Donoghue, president of the International Court of Justice, read out a preliminary ruling that ordered Israel to do more to reduce deaths in Gaza. The ruling, which is binding but not enforceable, did not call for a full ceasefire.
Limited humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza over the last 100 days.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the ICJ’s rulings are legally binding and “trusts” Israel will comply with its orders, including “to take all measures within its power” to prevent acts that would bring about the destruction of the Palestinian people.
“Those truly needing to stand trial are those that murdered and kidnapped children, women and the elderly,” former Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz said, referring to Hamas militants who stormed through Israeli communities on Oct. 7.
Following the ICJ’s decision, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war aimed at eliminating Hamas would continue.
In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Friday that Canada would continue “to follow the case very closely,” noting that while Canada supports the ICJ’s role in resolving disputes, that “does not mean that we accept the premise of the case brought by South Africa.”
On Saturday, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, allied with Hamas, said its fighters were engaging Israeli forces in the Khan Younis area and had fired rockets into Israel.
Health officials in Gaza said Israeli strikes hit in the vicinities of Al-Amal Hospital and the largest functioning medical facility in the south, Nasser Hospital.
The bombardment was compromising health care and endangering the lives of doctors, patients and displaced people, said Ashraf Al-Qidra, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Gaza.
The Israeli military said it is in contact with hospital directors and medical staff by phone and on the ground to make sure that they are running and accessible. Israel said Hamas operates in and around medical facilities, an allegation the group denies.
The World Health Organization and the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) issued urgent warnings about Nasser Hospital, saying remaining staff could barely function with supplies running out and intense fighting nearby.
“Our patients or the cases we receive are suffering severe burns and pain, and they are in desperate need of painkillers,” said Dr. Muhammad Harara, a doctor at the hospital. “We are lacking everything and these are the only painkillers left we have. If you want to count them, they are only for maybe five or four patients.”
Resident calls for ceasefire
In the southern city of Rafah, Zainab Khalil, 57, displaced with her family several times until reaching shelter not far from the border with Egypt, said the ICJ’s ruling on the temporary measures was important, but not enough.
“We want a ceasefire now,” she said.
Residents and Hamas militants reported fighting on Saturday in the central and northern parts of the enclave, where heavy rain flooded tents of those displaced, forcing some to seek alternative shelter in the middle of the night.
In Rafah, where over half of Gaza’s people are now taking cover in shelters and tents, the Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike killed three people in a house. In the occupied West Bank, one man was killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli forces near Jenin, residents said.
The Israeli military said Saturday it had conducted several “raids on terror targets” in Khan Younis, and that the airstrike in Rafah had targeted a Hamas commander.
Mixed reaction over ICJ ruling
Bilal al-Siksik, who lost his wife, a son and a daughter in Saturday’s strike in Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt, said the ICJ decision meant little since it did not stop the war.
“No one can speak in front of them [Israel]. America with all its greatness and strength can do nothing,” he said as he stood beside the pile or rubble and twisted metal that was once his home. “What can people do, who have no power or anything?” He said his family was asleep when their residence was struck.
Rafah and its surrounding areas are crammed with more than one million people after the Israeli military ordered civilians to seek refuge there from the fighting elsewhere in the territory. Despite those orders, the designated evacuation areas have repeatedly come under airstrikes, with Israel saying it would go after militants as needed.
Some Gaza residents expressed dismay that the UN court, which is based in The Hague, did not order an immediate end to the fighting as South Africa had requested.
“The court’s decisions were disappointing to us,” Yahya Saadat, who was displaced from the northern city of Beit Hanoun and now lives in the central town of Deir al-Balah, said late Friday. “We were waiting for the International Court of Justice to issue stricter decisions than that, such as a ceasefire, our return to our homes in the north, and stopping the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip.”
Others saw Friday’s rulings from a 17-judge panel as a significant, if symbolic, step.
“The measures approved by the court are mostly in the interest of the Palestinian people regarding human suffering, violation of international law, and many other issues,” said Mazen Muhaisen, who also was sheltering in Deir al-Balah.
