Live Blog Update| Israel's genocide in Gaza
This is an entry from: Israel-Palestine live: US and Israel air differences over Gaza strategy

Evening Recap

5 December 2023 00:22 GMT

Good evening MEE readers,

Israel launched one of its most intense bombardments of the Gaza Strip yet, as video footage shared by the Palestinian Red Crescent showed its forces carpet bombing the besieged enclave’s south with explosions illuminating the night sky.

The strikes came as Israel pushed deeper into southern Gaza, even as it continued to engage Hamas fighters in northern and central areas of the Strip.

Both Hamas and Israel released statements documenting what they said were casualties they had inflicted on the warring side amid reports of fierce, close quarter fighting.

Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades said they completely or partially destroyed 28 Israeli military vehicles in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, while Israel’s military said its forces had killed Hamas fighters who had attacked troops from a tunnel shaft and with an RPG.

Israeli officials said their troops were moving south, while Hamas and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular, leftist Palestinian fighting group, both said they had engaged Israeli troops on the outskirts of Khan Younis.

The renewed Israeli offensive has taken a brutal toll on civilians.

Doctors Without Borders said the number of wounded and dead Palestinians has surged since the breakdown of a fragile truce in Gaza last week. In the last 48 hours, over 100 dead Palestinians and over 400 injured have arrived at Al -Aqsa hospital in central Gaza alone. 

Meanwhile, Israel continued to order a forced displacement of Palestinians even as the UN said it considered “nowhere safe” in the besieged enclave.

Other key points from the past few hours:

  • The US issued guarded praise for Israel saying that its ally had made “a much more targeted request for evacuations" in southern Gaza than in the north, calling it “an improvement.”
  • A rocket fired by Hamas on 7 October likely hit an Israeli military base where many of the country’s nuclear-capable missiles are based, according to a report by The New York Times.
  • Unrwa commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini reiterated that nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza and that the number of Palestinian civilians being killed by Israel was “rapidly increasing.”
  • US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Iran had “enabled” attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthis