CAIRO: Israeli forces pounded several areas across Gaza on Wednesday, and residents reported fierce fighting overnight in Rafah in the south of the Palestinian enclave.
Residents said fighting intensified in the Tel Al-Sultan neighbourhood in western Rafah, where tanks were also trying to force their way north amid heavy clashes. The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said fighters attacked Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.
Since early May, ground fighting has focused on Rafah, abutting Egypt on Gaza’s southern edge, where around half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people had been sheltering after fleeing other areas. Most have since had to flee again.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli strike killed three Palestinians and wounded others near the northern Jabalia camp, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, medics said.
Residents and Hamas media said the casualties were among a group of people who gathered outside a store to get an internet signal to communicate with relatives elsewhere in the enclave. In Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, tank shells struck an apartment, killing at least five people and wounding others, medics said.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment. Medics said earlier that two Palestinians were killed in one Israeli missile strike in Rafah.
The Israeli military said in a statement its forces killed a Hamas militant who had been involved in the smuggling of weapons through the border between Rafah and Egypt.
It said jets struck dozens of militant targets in Rafah overnight, including fighters, military structures and tunnel shafts. In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, an Israeli air strike destroyed a house, killing four Palestinians, medics said. Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing over 250 hostages.