Fierce battles in north Gaza while aid arrives via US pier

Sustained attack on Rafah in south causes thousands to flee

- NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

Israeli forces battled Hamas fighters in the narrow alleyways of Jabalia in northern Gaza in some of the fiercest engagements since they returned to the area a week ago, while in the south militants attacked tanks massing around Rafah.

Residents said Israeli armour had thrust as far as the market at the heart of Jabalia, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, and that bulldozers were demolishing homes and shops in the path of the advance.

"Tanks and planes are wiping out residential districts and markets, shops, restaurants, everything. It is all happening before the one-eyed world," Ayman Rajab, a resident of western Jabalia, said via a chat app. Israel had said its forces cleared Jabalia months earlier in the Gaza war, triggered by the deadly Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, but said last week it was returning to prevent Islamist militants from regrouping there.

In southern Gaza bordering Egypt, thick smoke rose over Rafah, where an escalating Israeli assault has sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from what was one of the few remaining places of refuge. "People are terrified and they're trying to get away," Jens Laerke, UN humanitarian office spokesperson, said in Geneva, adding that most were following orders to move north towards the coast but that there were no safe routes or destinations.