JERUSALEM – Israeli forces battled Hamas militants amid the ruins of the heavily bombed Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as the nearly three-month-long war brought new suffering to Palestinians in the besieged territory.

The Israeli army said soldiers killed “dozens of terrorists,” including some using explosives, raided an arms cache in the southern city of Khan Yunis and discovered long-range rocket launchers.

In Gaza, where U.N. agencies have expressed concern about a worsening humanitarian crisis, 2.4 million Palestinians remained under siege and bombardment, most of them displaced and many huddled in shelters and tents due to a lack of food .

“The living conditions … are just hopeless,” said 43-year-old Mostafa Shennar, who fled Gaza City, now a largely destroyed urban battle zone, and lives in the crowded town of Rafah on the southern border.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and warned that the war that has been raging since the Oct. 7 attack could last “throughout 2024” as efforts for a new ceasefire have so far yielded no results.

The war broke out when Gaza’s ruler Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7, which, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, claimed around 1,140 lives in Israel, most of them civilians.

The militant Islamist group also took around 250 hostages, more than half of whom remain in captivity, according to Israeli reports. Their families fear for their lives in the face of fighting and bombing.

Israel has launched a devastating offensive after the worst attack in its history, killing at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

ARMY INVESTIGATES PRISONER’S DEATH

The Israeli army says 173 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza Strip fighting Hamas, which is blacklisted by the European Union and the United States as a terrorist organization.

The military announced Tuesday that it is investigating a soldier suspected of shooting a Palestinian captured in the Gaza Strip.

“The terrorist was placed under the supervision of a soldier who was suspected of having shot him, resulting in his death,” the army said of the incident on Sunday.

During its bloodiest Gaza war ever, Israel had the support of its most important ally, the United States, but it also urged greater restraint to save civilian lives.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which includes hard-line right-wing and nationalist groups, has repeatedly said it will continue fighting until Hamas is destroyed.

As 2024 begins, a long-running political dispute flared up again after sparking mass street protests last year against what is considered the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.

The Supreme Court has overruled a key part of a judicial reform package that Netanyahu has defended as a realignment of the powers of politicians and judges but that protesters have called a threat to Israel’s liberal democracy.

The setback to the so-called adequacy clause was a political blow to the wartime government, which was already under fire for intelligence failures in the run-up to October 7th.

SOME RESERVISTS GO HOME

The army announced Monday it would soon release some of the more than 300,000 reservists called up after Oct. 7, in part to prepare them for many more months of war.

It said reservists from two brigades, each with around 4,000 soldiers, would begin returning home this week.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also said some residents “will soon be able to return home” to towns and villages near Gaza that were attacked by Hamas and then evacuated.

The government has so far refused to elaborate on its plans for the post-war Gaza Strip and how it will be rebuilt and governed.

The US news agency Axios, citing unnamed Israeli sources, said Hamas submitted a proposal for a new hostage exchange agreement to Israel on Sunday through Qatari and Egyptian intermediaries.

The official told Axios that the proposal was deemed unacceptable by Israel’s war cabinet, but suggested progress toward a more accessible plan could be made in the future.

Deadly clashes in the West Bank

Violence has also increased in the occupied West Bank, where at least 321 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.

In the latest clash on Tuesday, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, the ministry said. The army said it shot dead four militants in an “anti-terror” operation that also left one soldier injured.

Separately, troops “neutralized” a Palestinian militant who fired on them in the town of Qalqilya, the army said, without elaborating.

In recent months there have also been almost daily exchanges of fire between the army and Iranian-backed groups, particularly Hezbollah, on the border with Lebanon.

Israel has also struck targets in Syria and launched attacks near Damascus overnight that caused “significant material damage,” state news agency SANA reported.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes hit a Syrian artillery company “in which members of the Lebanese Hezbollah are also present.”

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have also launched attacks on Israel and on cargo ships in the Red Sea, where the U.S. military has assembled a multinational task force to protect the vital shipping route.

The Pentagon said Monday it would soon withdraw the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, which had been stationed near Lebanon since shortly after the war broke out.

But it pledged to “maintain comprehensive capabilities” in the Mediterranean and throughout the Middle East, including the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, “to deter any state or non-state actor from escalating this crisis beyond Gaza.”