May 18, 2024
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops battled Hamas militants and attacked underground compounds on Tuesday with a focus on northern Gaza. An estimated 800,000 Palestinians have fled south, even though Israeli airstrikes have pounded the entirety of the besieged enclave.
Buoyed by the first successful rescue of a captive held by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for a cease-fire and again vowed to crush Hamas' ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel following its bloody Oct. 7 rampage, which ignited the war.
In a news conference late Monday, Netanyahu rejected calls for a cease-fire to facilitate the release of captives or end the war, which he has said will be long and difficult. “Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas,” he told a news conference. "That will not happen.”
The military said Monday that special forces rescued one of the estimated 240 captives seized by Palestinian militants during the wide-ranging assault. It said Pvt. Ori Megidish, 19, was “doing well” and had been reunited with her family.
Hamas has released four hostages, and has said it would let the others go in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which has dismissed the offer. Hamas released a short video Monday showing three other female captives.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday that Hamas must be held accountable for the death of German-Israeli dual citizen Shani Louk, taken by Hamas from a music festival. Footage of the 22-year-old Louk, unconscious and stripped down to her underwear in a pickup truck, has been circulated on social media. Though her face is unseen, she has been identified by her family, who recognized her tattoos and dreadlocks.
Louk’s mother told German news agency dpa earlier Monday that she had been informed by the Israeli military of the death of her daughter.
“The news of Shani Louk’s death is terrible,” Scholz wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Like many others, she was brutally murdered. This shows the full barbarity behind the Hamas attack — who must be held accountable.”
“This is terror, and Israel has the right to defend itself,” Scholz wrote.
More than half the territory's 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes, with hundreds of thousands sheltering in packed U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters or in hospitals alongside thousands of wounded patients.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, says nearly 672,000 Palestinians are sheltering in its schools and other facilities — four times their capacity. Thousands of people broke into its aid warehouses over the weekend to take food, as supplies of basic goods have dwindled because of the Israeli siege.
There has been no central electricity in Gaza for weeks, and Israel has barred the entry of fuel needed to power emergency generators for hospitals and homes.
UNRWA, which hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza rely on for basic services even in normal times, says 64 of its staff have been killed since the start of the war.
“This is the highest number ever of U.N. aid workers killed in any conflict around the world in such a short time,” spokesperson Juliette Touma told The Associated Press. “UNRWA will never be the same without these colleagues.”
The war has also threatened to ignite even heavier fighting on other fronts. Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group have traded fire on a daily basis along the border, and Israel and the U.S. have struck targets in Syria linked to Iran, which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups in the region.
The military said it shot down what appeared to be a drone near the southernmost city of Eilat and intercepted a missile over the Red Sea on Tuesday, neither of which entered Israeli airspace. It did not say who launched them, but earlier this month, a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted three cruise missiles and several drones launched toward Israel by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said ground operations in Gaza are focused on the north, including Gaza City, which he said was the “center of gravity of Hamas."
“But we also continue to strike in other parts of Gaza. We are hunting their commanders, we are attacking their infrastructure, and whenever there is an important target that is related to Hamas, we strike it," he said.
The military said it struck some 300 militant targets over the past day, including compounds inside tunnels, and that troops had engaged in several battles with Palestinian militants armed with antitank missiles and machine guns. Video footage released by the military showed soldiers and a tank moving down a dirt road between two rows of demolished buildings, some of them three to four stories high.
Larger ground operations have been launched both north and east of Gaza City, which before the war was home to over 650,000 people.
Conricus said some 800,000 people have heeded the Israeli military's orders to flee from the northern part of the strip to the south. But tens of thousands of people remain in and around Gaza City.
In a news conference late Monday, Netanyahu rejected calls for a cease-fire to facilitate the release of captives or end the war, which he has said will be long and difficult. “Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas,” he told a news conference. "That will not happen.”
More than 8,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry said Monday.
Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas' initial attack. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel.
