RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Hamas has begun deploying police forces and making partial salary payments to some of its civil servants in Gaza City in recent days, resurfacing in areas from which Israel had withdrawn the bulk of its troops a month ago, four residents and a senior official in the militant group said Saturday.
Signs of a Hamas resurgence in the Gaza Strip’s largest city underscore the group’s resilience despite Israel’s deadly air and ground campaign against it over the past four months. Israel has said it’s determined to crush Hamas militarily and prevent it from returning to power in Gaza, an enclave it has ruled since 2007.
In recent days, Israeli forces renewed strikes in the western and northwestern parts of Gaza City, including in areas where some of the salary distributions were reported to have taken place.
Four Gaza City residents told The Associated Press that in recent days, uniformed and plainclothes police officers deployed near police headquarters and other government offices, including near Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest. The residents said they saw both the return of civil servants and subsequent Israeli airstrikes near the makeshift offices.The return of police marks an attempt to reinstate order in the devastated city after Israel withdrew a significant number of troops from northern Gaza last month, a Hamas official told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The official said the group’s leaders had given directions to reestablish order in parts of the north where Israeli forces had withdrawn, including helping prevent the looting of shops and houses abandoned by residents who had heeded repeated Israeli evacuation orders and headed to the southern half of Gaza.
During Israel’s ground offensive, many homes and buildings were left half-standing or reduced to piles of scrap, rubble and dust.
Saeed Abdel-Bar, a resident of Gaza City, said a cousin received funds from a makeshift Hamas office near the hospital that was set up to distribute $200 payouts to government employees, including police officers and municipal workers.
Since seizing control of Gaza nearly 17 years ago, Hamas has been operating a government bureaucracy with tens of thousands of civil servants, including teachers, traffic cops and civil police who operate separately from the group’s secretive military wing.
The partial salary payments of $200 for at least some government employees signal that Israel has not delivered a knock-out blow to Hamas, even as it claims to have killed more than 9,000 Hamas fighters.
Ahmed Abu Hadrous, a Gaza City resident, said Israeli warplanes struck the area where the makeshift office is located multiple times earlier this week, including Saturday morning.
The strikes come roughly a month after Israeli military leaders said they had broken up the command structure of Hamas battalions in the north, but that individual fighters were continuing to carry out guerrilla-style attacks.
At least 11 people were injured on Saturday after Israel’s military fired smoke bombs at displaced people sheltering at the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Khan Younis, the organization said. It didn’t elaborate and the Israeli military had no immediate comment.The injuries followed violence earlier this week, when Israeli forces opened fire at the headquarters and an adjacent hospital, killing three displaced people and an aid worker. Six others were injured, the Red Crescent said on Friday.
At least 17 people, including women and children, were killed in two separate airstrikes overnight in Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, according to the registration office at a hospital where the bodies were taken.
The first strike hit a residential building east of Rafah, killing at least 13 people from the Hijazi family. The dead included four women and three children, hospital officials said. The second strike struck a house in the Jeneina area of Rafah, killing at least two men and two women from the Hams family.
The 17 bodies were taken to the Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital, the main health facility in Rafah, and were seen by an AP journalist.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said Saturday that 107 people were killed over the preceding 24-hour period, bringing the wartime total to 27,238. More than 66,000 people have been wounded.
