Despair in Gaza as fighting intensifies despite promise to scale down war

Israeli strikes in southern and central Gaza intensified on Wednesday despite a pledge by Israel that it would pull out some troops and shift to a more targeted campaign, and pleading from its ally Washington to kill fewer civilians.

Israel has said this week it is planning to begin drawing down troops, at least from the northern part of Gaza, after weeks of US pressure to scale down its operations and shift to what Washington says should be a more targeted campaign.

But the fighting appears to be as intense as ever, especially in the southern and central areas where Israeli forces launched ground advances last month.

Residents of Bureij, Nusseirat, and Maghazi in the central Gaza Strip reported intensive bombardment overnight, with Israeli tanks that launched an offensive there around Christmas pushing deeper into Bureij and Maghazi.

In Nusseirat, a new wave of displacement was under way, a day after Israel dropped new warning leaflets for residents of several districts to evacuate their homes and head west to Deir al-Balah.

Israeli bombing was also taking place there, with the Palestinian Red Crescent releasing video showing ambulances arriving at a hospital with the dead and wounded, including children.

In a sign of the intensity of the fighting, Israel reported nine of its soldiers killed in Gaza on Tuesday, one of the deadliest days for its troops of the war.

Israel has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza since launching its campaign to eradicate the Hamas that runs the enclave, after its fighters killed 1,200 Israelis and captured 240 hostages in a rampage on October 7.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his fourth trip to the region since the war began, went to Ramallah on Wednesday and met Palestinian leaders, including Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The PA, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank and accepts Israel's right to exist, lost control of Gaza in 2007 to Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Blinken has also met Israeli leaders and visited nearby Arab states, in search of a future settlement for the Gaza Strip, which has been laid to waste by Israeli bombardment creating a humanitarian crisis for its 2.3 million residents.

Three months after the Hamas attacks, Tali Kizhner knelt and caressed the foot of a concrete wall inside a bomb shelter where her 22-year-old son Segev had tried to hide with dozens of other young people that fled from a music festival. The gunmen tossed in grenades and opened fire to kill them.

"I wanted to know where his last moments were, whether there was anywhere to hide. What happened there. To feel it," she said.