rewrite this title Israel ‘expanding’ troops in Gaza, Hamas to counter with ‘full force’
Summerize this News Article
- Israel said it was ‘expanding’ the number of troops it has on the ground in northern Gaza.
- Hamas has vowed to respond to attacks with ‘full force’.
- Israel has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops along the border before an expected wider ground offensive.
Israeli forces have announced that they are “expanding” ground activities in northern Gaza as the besieged enclave faces the largest bombardment of Israeli attacks since the start of the war.
Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, has promised to meet attacks with “full force” in response to the ground operations overnight, with the Israeli army saying that its soldiers were still in the field on Saturday morning.
Israeli troops, backed by tanks, launched brief overnight incursions into Gaza on Wednesday and Thursday night, but this third and largest offensive marks an escalation of their ground manoeuvres.
The increased fighting came amid heavy air bombardments and Israel knocking out communications to create a near-blackout of information, largely cutting off the 2.3 million people in besieged Gaza from contact with the outside world.
United Nations officials, NGOs and media, including Al Jazeera, had difficulty reaching their teams on the ground.
READ | Israel rebuffs allies’ calls to ‘pause’ Gaza assault in first open disagreement
At 07:00 GMT on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud managed to report live from Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
He described what Palestinians lived through as “the most difficult and bloodiest night since the beginning of this war”.
Palestinian health authorities say that more than 7,326 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, when Israel began its aerial bombardment of the Strip. This, after Hamas launched an attack inside Israel that killed at least 1 405 people there.
Describing the events that took place overnight, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud said: “It all started when the Israeli military spokesperson distributed a map asserting that al-Shifa hospital is the headquarters of Hamas leadership … Hamas then denied it has any rooms underneath the hospital. An hour later, Gaza experienced a complete blackout.
“At about 19:00 local time, a major attack by sea and land took place, concentrated on the northern part of the Gaza Strip, around the vicinity of al-Shifa hospital,” he said.
It was difficult to get an exact number of casualties at this stage, but “we have been hearing reports that hundreds of people have been killed in those areas and emergency services were not able to get to them in time to help”, Mahmoud said, adding that families in southern Gaza have also not been able to reach their relatives in the north.
“The problem with cutting Gaza from the outside world has made people feel it could be a genocide in the making without them knowing what has happened to their relatives,” he said.
DEVELOPING | Troops remain on the ground in Gaza, Israel says
Late on Friday, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said ground forces were “expanding their activity” in Gaza and “acting with great force … to achieve the objectives of the war”. Israel has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops along the border before an expected wider ground offensive.
Israel also claimed it had killed the man in charge of air operations for Hamas, describing him as one of the planners of the October 7 attacks, but this has not been independently verified.
Overnight into Saturday, warplanes struck 150 tunnels and underground bunkers in northern Gaza, the military said. Hamas’s extensive underground installations, many of them located under Gaza City in the north of the territory, are seen as key targets of the offensive.
On Saturday, Hagari said the army was “progressing through the stages” of the war in Gaza.
He said:
Infantry, armoured, engineering and artillery forces are participating in the [military] activity, accompanied by heavy [air] fire.
He also said Israel will allow aid trucks with food, water and medicine into the Gaza Strip during the day.
On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of a non-binding resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the blackout was “making it impossible” for ambulances to reach the injured in Gaza.
“Evacuation of patients is not possible under such circumstances, nor to find safe shelter,” he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
He said the WHO was not able to contact its staff and health facilities.
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