Sawt Falasteen - Israel military says controls 40 percent of Gaza City

Israel has intensified in recent days its bombardments of the area of Gaza City, in the territory's north, ahead of the planned offensive, despite mounting international pressure to halt the campaign.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Thursday killed more than 30 people in the city, out of at least 64 Palestinians killed across the Gaza Strip.

As concern grows over the dire humanitarian conditions for Gaza's population of more than two million, one of the European Union's top officials called the war a "genocide" -- a term strongly rejected by Israel, but which several governments and numerous rights groups have adopted.

In a televised briefing, Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said that "we hold 40 percent of the territory of Gaza City", adding that the offensive "will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days".

Defrin vowed to "increase the pressure" on Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war, "until it is defeated".

With the vast majority of Gazans already displaced at least once during the war, a senior Israeli military official told journalists on Wednesday that authorities expected the new offensive to push an estimated one million Palestinians south, away from Gaza City.

The United Nations last month declared a famine in and around Gaza City, where it estimates nearly one million people live.

- Basic services 'collapse' -

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an Israeli air strike on Thursday hit a tent sheltering a displaced Palestinian family in Gaza City, killing five people including three children.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said forces had targeted "a Hamas terrorist", adding that it "regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians".

In Tel al-Hawa, the neighbourhood where the strike reported by the civil defence took place, AFP footage showed Palestinians outside damaged tents, clearing up scattered belongings.

A pair of blood-stained pink slippers lay amongst the debris.

Israa al-Basous, who lives there, recounted seeing the tent next to hers on fire.

"My children and I were sleeping in the tent when we heard the sound of bombing. Shrapnel fell on us, and my four children started screaming," she told AFP.

At Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, where the dead and wounded were being received, bodies wrapped in white shrouds lay on the floor of the hospital's morgue.

One woman stroked the head of her dead son as his body lay outside on a stretcher.

"Who are you leaving me to, son? Why? Why?" she wept.

"Without immediate and increased access to food... more children will starve," she said.

"Palestinian life is being dismantled here, steadily but surely."

- 'Destroyed' -

European Commission vice president Teresa Ribera, speaking in Paris, called the war a "genocide" and slammed the 27-nation bloc for failing to act to stop it.

"The genocide in Gaza exposes Europe's failure to act and speak with one voice," Ribera said, in remarks slammed by Israel as serving "Hamas propaganda".

Top EU officials have so far shied away from calling Israel's actions a "genocide".

In central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defence said another Israeli air strike killed seven people including three children.

The Israeli military said it was "not aware" of a strike there.

AFP footage showed Yousef Suleiman, who said he lost relatives in the pre-dawn strike, walking through a bombed-out shelter where tattered scraps of material hung from tent poles.

"The entire tent was destroyed, along with everyone inside," he told AFP.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency or the Israeli military.

Hamas's October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,231 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.

A Hamas statement meanwhile said that top officials from the group, which is backed by Iran, met in Doha with Tehran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to discuss efforts to bring the war to an end.

H.Darwish--SF-PST