Heavy battles and bombardment hit Gaza City’s Shujaiya district for a fourth day on Sunday, months after Israel declared Hamas’s command structure dismantled in the northern area.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the devastated neighborhood, where the Israeli army said it has fought Palestinian militants both “above and below ground” in tunnels.

Months of on-and-off talks towards a Gaza truce and hostage release deal have meanwhile made little progress, with Hamas saying Saturday there was “nothing new” in a revised plan presented by United States mediators.

The Israeli military said ground and air forces had carried out raids on compounds used by militants and “eliminated several terrorists” over the past 24 hours.

It also reported clashes in central Gaza and the southern Rafah area, a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the “intense phase” of the war raging since October 7 was nearing an end.

‘Our lives have become hell’

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that “60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from Shujaiya since new fighting broke out there on Thursday and the army issued evacuation orders.

For those who remain, “our lives have become hell,” said 50-year-old Shujaiya resident Siham al-Shawa.

She told AFP people were trapped as strikes could happen “anywhere” and “it is difficult to get out of the neighborhood under fire.”

“We do not know where to go to protect ourselves.”

Netanyahu said Israeli “forces are operating in Rafah, Shujaiya, everywhere in the Gaza Strip.”

According to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, he told his cabinet that “dozens of terrorists are being eliminated every day.”

The war started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,877 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry.

Six people were killed in an air strike at dawn targeting a house in Rafah, said medics at Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were taken.

Artillery shelling also rocked parts of the city, witnesses said.

Islamic Jihad militant killed in West Bank

The Palestinian Health Ministry said an Israeli strike on Sunday in the occupied West Bank killed a man identified by the Islamic Jihad militant group as one of its commanders.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack, which official Palestinian news agency Wafa said was carried out with a drone.

The Ramallah-based Health Ministry said a Palestinian man was killed and five other people were wounded “following a strike by the (Israeli) occupation” in the northern West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp.

Wafa identified the slain man as Saeed Izzat Jaber, 24.

Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad later said “the martyred leader” was one of its commanders, adding that he had previously “survived several assassination attempts.”

Jaber’s killing “will strengthen our resistance” against Israel, the group said.

According to Wafa, the Israeli military had fired three projectiles from a drone at a house in the camp near the town of Tulkarm.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its crews were treating two people wounded from “shrapnel following a strike on a house in the Nur Shams camp.”

The organization added that rescuers were initially unable to enter the targeted building “due to fire.”

An AFP correspondent later saw Nur Shams residents searching through the rubble, while blocks of concrete slabs lay scattered as a portion of the house was ripped off by the strike.

Even before the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, the West Bank saw a surge of violence, which has since escalated to levels unseen in about two decades, with frequent military raids and attacks by Israeli settlers.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

At least 554 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli forces or settlers since the Gaza war began, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank over the same period have killed at least 15 Israelis including soldiers, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

With AFP