GAZA CITY (Dispatches) -- Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said on Tuesday that civilian deaths in Gaza “are a stain on Israel and its allies”.
In a statement, he said: “The pulverizing of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age. Each day we see more dead children and new depths of suffering for the innocent people enduring this hell.”
Egeland added that many NRC staff members now live on the streets. One of them does so with her two-month-old baby.
“Countries supporting Israel with arms must understand that these civilian deaths will be a permanent stain on their reputation. They must demand an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. Only a cessation of hostilities will allow us to ensure effective relief to the two million who now require it,” he added.
His remarks came as Zionist forces stormed southern Gaza’s main city on Tuesday in what they called the most intense day of combat in five weeks of ground invasion, and hospitals struggled to cope with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded.
The commander of the Zionist military’s Southern Command, General Yaron Finkelman, said Israeli forces were fighting in Jabalia, a large urban refugee camp and in northern Gaza next to Gaza City, in Shuja’iyya, east of the city and in Khan Younis.
Khan Younis residents said Israeli troops and tanks had crossed through the Israeli fence enclosing the coastal Gaza Strip and closed in on the city from the east.
The Zionists, who largely seized Gaza’s northern half last month before pausing for the week-long truce, say they are now extending their ground invasion to the south.
Palestinian health officials said large numbers of people had been martyred in a strike on houses in Deir al-Balah, north of Khan Younis. Dr Eyad Al-Jabri, head of the Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital there, told Reuters at least 45 people had been martyred.
Israeli bombardments have driven 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents from their homes, most fleeing south. Crowded southern areas are now sheltering triple their usual population.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai Alkalia called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Al-Quds, as the Palestinian death toll since the Israeli onslaught began on October 7 reached 16,160.
In a press conference in Ramallah on Tuesday, Alkalia also called for international pressure on the Zionist regime to allow medical
 teams, aid trucks and medical supplies to enter the besieged Gaza Strip.
At Khan Younis’ main Nasser hospital, the wounded arrived by ambulance, car, flatbed truck and donkey cart after what survivors described as a strike on a school being used as a shelter for the displaced.
Inside a ward, almost every inch of floor space was taken up by the wounded, medics hurrying from patient to patient while relatives wailed.
A doctor carried the small limp body of a dead boy in a tracksuit and placed him in a corner, arms splayed across the blood-smeared tile. On the floor nearby, surrounded by discarded bandages and rubber gloves, lay a wounded boy and girl, their limbs tangled with the stands holding IV drips in their arms.
Two young girls were being treated, still covered in dust from the collapse of the house that had buried their family.
“My parents are under the rubble,” sobbed one. “I want my mum, I want my mum, I want my family.”
Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashra al-Qidra said at least 43 corpses had already reached Nasser hospital that morning and that hospitals in southern Gaza Strip were “totally collapsing”.
Gazans say there is no safe place, with remaining towns and shelters already overwhelmed, and Israel continuing to bomb the areas where it is telling people to go.
James Elder, spokesperson for UN children’s agency UNICEF, said the few small areas designated “safe” by Israel were merely “tiny patches of barren land”, street corners, sidewalks or half-built buildings unsuitable for the hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need of shelter.