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Israeli forces on Thursday clashed with Hamas in Gaza, with air strikes and urban fighting rocking the southern city of Khan Yunis, near where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken refuge.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for “urgent steps to mitigate the grave danger” facing Gaza’s besieged population, including “terrible injuries, severe hunger and… the risk of disease.”

In Jerusalem, families of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza rallied again to demand their release, and a kibbutz announced that a 70-year-old Israeli-American woman believed to be the oldest woman held in captivity had died in the October 7 attacks.

US President Joe Biden said he was “shocked” by the news of Judith Weinstein Haggai’s death, and pledged that Washington “will not stop working” with its ally Israel to return the remaining hostages to their homeland.

The war, which began with a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, has destroyed much of northern Gaza, while the battlefront has shifted south of the besieged enclave.

The Israeli army said it deployed an additional brigade in Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, where AFP reporters reported continuous air and artillery strikes.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society reported that the bombing killed at least 10 people near the city’s Al Amal Hospital, an area where it said about 14,000 people were taking shelter.

Later Thursday, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health announced that 20 people were killed, most of them women and children, and dozens were wounded in a bombing on the Shaboura camp in the southern city of Rafah.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the attack that occurred on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to a tally prepared by Agence France-Presse based on Israeli figures.

On October 7, Hamas also took 250 hostages, more than half of whom remain captive – a source of grave concern for their families, who protested in Jerusalem to demand “their repatriation.”

The ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground invasion have killed at least 21,320 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.

Ashraf Al-Qudra, spokesman for the ministry, announced on Thursday that another 200 people, “including entire families,” had been killed during the past 24 hours in the raids.

The Israeli army says that 167 of its soldiers were killed inside Gaza during its war against Hamas, which Israel, the United States and the European Union consider a “terrorist” group.

In all, the army said, more than 500 soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, including in the Hamas offensive and battle to regain control of southern Israel, inside Gaza, and in cross-border hostilities with the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Quadruplets born in the war

The United Nations says that more than 80 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million people have been displaced from their homes, and many of them are now living in cramped shelters or temporary tents in the far south, around the city of Rafah, near Egypt.

In the Maghazi refugee camp in the center of the country, which was targeted on Sunday in a raid that killed at least 70 people, Walid Muhammad Eid, a resident, expressed his pain and frustration.

He said: “They told us to go to Rafah, but we don’t want to.” “Why? To go live on the streets over there?”

“The whole neighborhood here was evacuated. They bombed the school, but we didn’t leave because we had nowhere else to go.”

The Israeli blockade imposed after October 7, after years of stifling siege, deprived Gaza residents of food, water, fuel and medicine.

Acute shortages have been alleviated only sporadically, primarily through the entry of humanitarian aid convoys through Egypt.

Israel announced Thursday that it had given preliminary approval to the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean to extend a “maritime lifeline” to ship aid to Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Hayat said, “There is a basic permit to use this road, but there are still some logistical problems awaiting resolution.”

One of the many displaced Palestinians, 28-year-old Iman al-Masri, recently gave birth to quadruplets in southern Gaza after fleeing her home in the devastated north.

She said that the arduous journey “affected my pregnancy,” noting that on December 18, she gave birth to two girls and two boys by caesarean section, and one of them was in a very fragile condition that he was unable to leave the hospital.

“They are very thin,” she said, speaking in a schoolroom turned shelter in Deir al-Balah. “It’s cold and windy and there’s no bathtub…I just use wet wipes.”

Flaring tensions in the Middle East

Violence has also broken out across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with at least 314 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, according to the region’s health ministry.

Overnight, Israeli forces raided money exchange shops across the West Bank, which the army said provided money to armed groups.

In Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, forces killed a man, according to the Ministry of Health, and another was later shot and wounded near Bethlehem.

A UN report said the human rights situation in the West Bank was deteriorating rapidly and urged Israel to “end unlawful killings” against the Palestinian population.

The deadliest war on record in Gaza has also sharply exacerbated tensions between Israel and its arch-enemy Iran, which supports militant groups across the Middle East.

Iran blamed Israel for a missile attack in Syria on Monday that killed top Iranian military commander Razi Mousavi, whose mass funeral was held in Tehran on Thursday.

The crowd chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” ​​after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei performed a prayer over the body of Mousavi, the Supreme Commander of Foreign Operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force.

Tehran vowed to avenge the killing of the most senior general in the Revolutionary Guards since the United States assassinated Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

Israel has exchanged heavy cross-border fire with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon since the outbreak of the Gaza war, and has warned that it will intensify its military action unless Hezbollah fighters withdraw from the border.

Hezbollah accused Israel of hacking into surveillance camera systems installed outside homes and shops in southern Lebanon, and urged residents there to turn off the devices.

Another Iranian ally, the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, launched repeated drone and missile attacks on Israel, which were intercepted. It also targeted ships in the Red Sea, disrupting international trade.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)