Israel Defense Forces battled Hamas Saturday in fierce fighting in the northern Gaza town of Jabalia – which is also the site of the area’s largest refugee camp.
Thick smoke engulfed the city as residents complained of near-constant aerial bombardment and fire from Israeli tanks.
The attack came after Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said on Friday that the IDF had achieved almost “full operational control” of northern Gaza.
On Saturday, Hagari said that the IDF continues to expand its operations in southern Gaza, the Times of Israel reported.
“When they entered the new stronghold of Hamas, the soldiers engaged in heavy fighting,” said Hagari.
The IDF was still fighting “very hard” in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, he added.
An Israeli soldier operates in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict. via REUTERS People mourn as they collect the bodies of Palestinians killed in an airstrike on Dec. 23. Getty Images
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The Israel-Hamas War: How we got here
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after winning the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: The terrorist group Hamas wins Palestinian legislative elections.
2007: Hamas takes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launched a military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fired rockets into the city of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches its biggest attack on Israel in 50 years, in an early morning ambush on Oct. 7, firing thousands of rockets and sending dozens of militants into Israeli cities.
The terrorists killed over 1,200 Israelis, injured over 4,200, and took at least 200 hostages.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly announced, “We are at war,” and promised Hamas would pay “an unprecedented price.”
Gaza’s Ministry of Health – which is controlled by Hamas – reports at least 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,500 injured since the war began.
Israel-Hamas war spreads across Gaza: Here’s the latest
Israel has intensified its war against Hamas. ZUMAPRESS.com
Both Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet member Benny Gantz visited northern Gaza Saturday – and vowed that cities in the south would face the same fate, the Times of Israel said.
“I’m sure of that [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar was sitting in his bunker watching TV, he saw what Beit Hanoun looked like,” Gallant said in a video statement.
“This also applies to the Hamas commander who is now fighting against our forces in Khan Younis, he understands how the story ends for the Beit Hanoun battalion,” he added.
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Israel’s Gaza campaign should also serve as a warning to Hezbollah, which continues to attack Israel from Lebanon to the north.
Also this weekend, the IDF confirmed that five soldiers were killed in the latest clashes in Gaza – including two staff sergeants from the GIvati Brigade reconnaissance unit.
The new deaths bring the total number of ground operation deaths to 144, the Times of Israel said.
Earlier this week, the United Nations and other agencies issued dire warnings that more than 500,000 Gazans – about a quarter of the population – are starving as a result of the war.
The crisis has surpassed near-famine in Yemen and Afghanistan in recent years, the report claimed.
The risk of starvation in Gaza “increases every day” because insufficient aid is entering the war-torn region, he said.
“It doesn’t get any worse. I have never seen anything on the scale that happened in Gaza. And at this speed,” said Arif Husain, chief economist of the UN World Food Programme.
“This entirely man-made, predictable and preventable state of disaster means that children and families in the Gaza Strip now face violence from the air, and deprivation from the ground—with the worst likely to come,” UNICEF wrote in its own assessment that aggravating from the situation.
Meanwhile, doctors at a field hospital in central Gaza said they were left with dwindling amounts of gauze and iodine as they struggled to keep up with the influx of injured patients.
“We changed their clothes one day and the next we found an infection because there was no sterilization, no special place. There are no garbage bags,” surgeon Bashir al-Hourani told Reuters of his fight to keep adults and children healthy.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
