GAZA: As fighting now going on in all directions, Israel has sharply increased its strikes on the Gaza Strip on Friday, while in an air raid the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer was killed.

In Khan Yunis, Reuters journalists have seen dead and wounded swamping the main Nasser hospital, where there was no room on the floor for arriving patients sprawled across blood-smeared tiles.

“We are staying in an area that is, according to maps, a safe area,” said Mohamed al-Amouri, adjusting an oxygen mask for his school-aged son who lay on a hospital bed in soccer shorts with his legs bandaged and his body lacerated.

“Children were on the streets playing, living life normally... We went out after the hit, hearing screams, to find youth, children, women and men in body parts — among them martyrs (dead) and injured.”

Troops kill six Palestinians in occupied West Bank; poet Refaat Alareer killed in strike

The health ministry said the death toll from Israel’s aggression had risen to 17,487, with thousands more missing and presumed buried under rubble.

Hamas reported the most intense fighting with Israeli forces were taking place in the north in Shejaia, as well as in the south in Khan Yunis.

More strikes were reported morning in Khan Yunis in the south, the Nusseirat camp in the centre and Gaza City in the north. Local residents reported intensified Israeli tank fire on the Gaza City districts of Shejaia, Nafaq, Sabra and Jala in the north, while health officials said five Palestinians were killed in an air strike on a house in Khan Yunis.

While Israel’s military said 94 Israeli soldiers had been killed since Oct 7.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman posted to social media that all residents must leave the Jabalia and Zeitoun areas in the north, as well as Shejaia and the old city district of Gaza City.

‘Heartbroken’

Alareer, is one of the leaders of a young generation of authors in Gaza who chose to write in English to tell their stories, who was killed in an Israeli strike, his friends said overnight on Thursday.

“My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family a few minutes ago,” wrote his friend, the Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha, on Facebook.

“I don’t want to believe this. We both loved to pick strawberries together.”

Alareer had said a few days after Israel began its ground offensive in Oct that he refused to leave northern Gaza, the epicentre of the fighting at the time.

“Refaat’s assassination is tragic, painful and outrageous. It is a huge loss,” his friend Ahmed Alnaouq wrote on X.

The Literary Hub website also paid tribute to him, while author and journalist Ramzy Baroud wrote on X: “Rest in peace Refaat Alareer. We will continue to be guided by your wisdom, today and for eternity.” Alareer, a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught Shakespeare among other subjects, was also one of the co-founders of the “We are not numbers” project, which pairs authors from Gaza with mentors abroad who help them write stories in English about their experiences.

West Bank violence

Israeli forces shot dead six Palestinians in a raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, as the army confirmed it conducted a “counter-terrorism” operation.

The ministry said those who lost their lives included a 14-year-old child and an 18-year-old. It said they had been killed “by bullets from the occupation (Israel) in the Al-Fara refugee camp” near Tubas.

The Palestinian Red Crescent also reported having treated six people wounded by gunfire, one of them critically.

The Israeli forces who stormed the camp amid intense fire and... explosions, said WAFA.

The Palestinian Authority says Israeli fire and settler attacks in the West Bank have killed at least 263 Palestinians since Oct 7.

This exceeds the entire death toll of 235, most of them Palestinians, killed by Israeli forces last year.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2023