Second Hamas Commander Killed In Refugee Camp, First Evacuees Leave Gaza

Second Hamas Commander Killed In Refugee Camp, First Evacuees Leave Gaza – Israeli Forces Say

Israeli forces killed another Hamas commander on Wednesday in their second strike on Gaza’s largest refugee camp in two days, the military said, as the first group of civilian evacuees from the besieged enclave crossed into Egypt.

Pressing their offensive against Hamas militants, Israel again bombed the densely populated Gaza Strip from land, sea and air in its campaign to destroy the Islamist group after its deadly cross-border rampage into southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Palestinians sifted through rubble in a desperate hunt for people trapped underneath after Wednesday’s Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp, located in the urban sprawl of north Gaza. “It is a massacre,” said one witness of the strike.

There was no immediate word on possible casualties from the second explosion, which came a day after Palestinian health officials said an Israeli air strike had killed about 50 people and wounded 150 there.

The Israeli military later issued a statement saying its fighter jets had struck a Hamas command and control complex in Jabalia “based on precise intelligence”, killing the head of the Islamist group’s anti-tank missile unit, Muhammad A’sar.

“Hamas deliberately builds its terror infrastructure under, around and within civilian buildings, intentionally endangering Gazan civilians,” the statement said.

Israel has said Tuesday’s strike on the same camp killed Ibrahim Biari, who it said was a ringleader of what it called the “murderous terror attack” on Oct. 7.

The people being evacuated to Egypt had been trapped in Gaza since the start of the war more than three weeks ago. They were driven through the Rafah border crossing and underwent security checks, officials said.

Dr Fathi Abu al-Hassan, a U.S. passport holder, described hellish conditions inside Gaza without water, food or shelter.

“We open our eyes on dead people and we close our eyes on dead people,” he said while waiting to cross into Egypt.

“If this happened in any other country… even in the desert, (people) will combine together to (help) us,” he said.

Wednesday’s evacuees included at least 320 of 500 on an initial list of foreign passport holders as well as dozens of severely injured Gazans, Egyptian sources and a Palestinian official said, the first beneficiaries of the deal brokered between Egypt, Israel and Hamas.

At least 49 medical evacuees had arrived in Egypt, the governor of Egypt’s Sinai province told reporters later.

Nahed Abu Taeema, director of Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, told Reuters 19 critically injured patients from his hospital would be among the evacuees as they required “advanced surgeries that can’t be done here because of the lack of capabilities, especially women and children”.

Gaza border officials said the frontier would reopen on Thursday to let out more people on a list of foreign passport holders. A diplomatic source briefed on Egyptian plans said some 7,500 foreign passport holders would be evacuated from Gaza over the course of about two weeks.