JERUSALEM – Israeli forces pummelled central Gaza by land, sea and air on Dec 27, and the Palestinian authorities reported dozens more deaths after Israel’s military chief said the war on Hamas would grind on for months.

Reflecting Israeli resolve to wipe out Hamas despite growing global calls for a ceasefire, Israel’s chief of staff Herzi Halevi said the 11-week-old war would last many months and there were no “magic solutions” or “shortcuts”.

The Gaza health ministry said Israeli forces had killed 195 Palestinians and wounded 325 in the past 24 hours, bringing the recorded toll to 21,110 killed and 55,243 wounded in Israeli attacks in the coastal territory since Oct 7.

In central Gaza’s Al-Maghazi district, five Palestinians were killed in one air strike, medics said, while to the north in Gaza City, health officials said the bodies of seven Palestinians killed overnight arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital.

Residents also reported heavy fighting east and north of Al-Bureij district and in the nearby village of Juhr Ad-Deek, where they said Israeli tanks are stationed.

Israel’s military on Dec 27 reported three more soldiers killed in action in Gaza, bringing total military losses in the enclave since ground operations began on Oct 20 to 166.

The Hamas armed wing said its fighters attacked four Israeli bulldozers and a tank in the northern part of Khan Younis, the main city in southern Gaza and the scene of heavy fighting for several days.

Israeli intensified its raids this week, particularly in a central area just south of the waterway that bisects the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army told civilians to leave the area, though many said there was no safe place left to go.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) released footage taken mostly on Dec 25 and 26 at several Gaza hospitals, with its emergency medical team coordinator Sean Casey saying Gaza’s health capacity was 20 per cent of what it was 80 days ago.

Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages in a cross-border rampage on Oct 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with an assault that has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.

Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.

Spread threat

There are growing signs that the conflict in Gaza is expanding into a wider one and destabilising the Middle East.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Dec 26 on a container ship in the Red Sea and for an attempt to attack Israel with drones.

At the entrance to the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the Houthis have been attacking ships they say have links to Israel.

The attacks are a response to Israel’s assault on Gaza, the militia says. MSC Mediterranean Shipping confirmed that the container ship MSC United VIII was hit en route to Pakistan. It said no injuries were reported. 

US Central Command said on X that a US destroyer and F/A-18 fighter jets shot down 12 attack drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles and two land attack cruise missiles fired by the Houthis over the Southern Red Sea on Dec 26. It said there was no damage to ships nor reported injuries. 

On the Lebanon border on Dec 26, Israel said Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at a church, wounding a civilian and nine Israeli soldiers, after which it fired rockets from near a mosque, drawing retaliatory air strikes.

In India, meanwhile, there was an explosion near the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi. The authorities said no staff were hurt.

“We are in a multi-front war and are coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen, and Iran,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told lawmakers on Dec 26, listing six places where Iran-backed militants are active, as well as Iran itself.

United States strikes on targets in Iraq provided more warning signs of the war spreading. The Pentagon said on Dec 25 that its forces launched strikes on three installations in Iraq linked to Kataib Hezbollah.

Washington said the Iran-backed Iraqi insurgent group was behind an attack that injured three US personnel, leaving one in critical condition. 

“While we do not seek to escalate conflict in the region, we are committed and fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities,” Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. He called it a “necessary and proportionate” response.

Although Iran has denied helping militants attack commercial ships, it has vowed that Israel will pay a price for an air strike in Syria on Dec 25 that killed a senior commander of its Revolutionary Guard.

“Clearly, the longer the Israeli-Hamas war goes on with this sort of kinetic intensity, the more likely there would be some escalation,” said Dr Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former US official who has advised secretaries of state on the Middle East. 

‘Bloodbath’

“There’s blood everywhere in these hospitals at the moment,” said WHO’s Mr Casey, adding that nowhere in Gaza was safe. “We’re seeing almost only trauma cases come through the door and at a scale that’s quite difficult to believe. It’s a bloodbath as we said before, it’s carnage.”

The Israeli military said it was continuing to strike what it called terror targets in Gaza, at one point using its navy to hit suspects deemed to pose a threat to ground troops.

“We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces, which has claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve,” United Nations Human Rights Office spokesman Seif Magango said on Dec 26.

The Gaza authorities on Dec 26 buried 80 unidentified Palestinians whose bodies were handed over by Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the health ministry said.

According to the Islamic Waqf, or religious affairs ministry, the bodies were collected from the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which Hamas denies.

But even Israel’s closest ally, the US, has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate bombing”.

Six youths were killed in the West Bank city of Tulkarm in an Israeli raid, the Palestinian health ministry said.

An Israeli military statement on the incident said Israeli forces on a counter-terrorism operation came under attack by militants who threw explosives devices at them. The attackers were struck by an Israeli air force aircraft, it said.

Residents said the youths were not fighters nor militants and were far away from areas where clashes had erupted.

US-Israeli talks on war

In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed planning for what happens when the war ends, including governance and security in Gaza.

The two also discussed efforts to bring home the remaining hostages and a transition to a different phase of the war to focus on Hamas leaders when they met on Dec 26, a US official said.

The United States has pressed Israel in recent weeks to scale down its war to a more targeted operation. But Washington is still seen in the region as a supporter of Israel and US forces have been attacked by Iran-backed militants in the Middle East.

In an interview with Egyptian TV, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel intended to stay in Gaza after the war “but the whole world does not agree with it”.

He said the US could “order” Israel to agree that Gaza become part of a future Palestinian state. REUTERS