Israeli troops battled Hamas terrorists in southern Gaza as the conflict continued to escalate Saturday.
A Hamas compound and an anti-tank launch site were among 120 targets in the Gaza Strip hit during the day, the Times of Israel reported.
In what the Israel Defense Forces called a “targeted raid” in southern Gaza – one of the first clashes in the enclave – members of a Hamas cell emerged from a tunnel to attack tanks and Gaza Division combat engineers, who had arrived to map buildings and clear planted explosives.
The IDF fired on the fighters and killed an unknown number of them, the army said.
In other developments:
- IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Herzi Halevi entered the war zone for his first meeting with the frontline troops there. Halevi held an “evaluation” with the 162nd Division commander and other officers, according to the video issued by the IDF.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended a summit in Amman, Jordan with the foreign ministers of Lebanon, Jordan, and Qatar, who demanded an immediate Gaza ceasefire. “The entire region is drowning in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi. But Blinken argued that a ceasefire “will only leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7.”
- Israel share disturbing videos the bloody aftermath of the Hamas massacre at the Tribe of Nova music festival to mark the fourth week since the October 7 terrorist attacks that sparked the war. “Don’t look away,” read a post on the country’s official X account, over footage of an IDF soldier finding dozens of bloodied corpses of revelers in a quiet festival area.
- The family home of Ismail Haniyeh, a senior political leader of Hamas, was destroyed in an airstrike in the Shati refugee camp on the northern edge of Gaza City, Hamas-run media said. Haniyeh has been living in exile in Qatar since 2019, but the house is used by her two sons, a senior Hamas official said.
- The IDF accused Hamas of firing at Israeli soldiers as they tried to secure a passage for refugees fleeing south. Salah a-Din Road, the Gaza Strip’s main highway, was opened for three hours on Saturday to allow civilians to leave – but geolocated video showed mortars and missiles hitting buildings where soldiers were working, the IDF said. No injuries were reported.
- The Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, led by the flagship aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, arrived in the region on Saturday, according to US Central Command.
Pallets of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid were loaded onto a Gaza-bound flight at Orleans Air Base in France.REUTERS Anti-Israel protesters gather in Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza for the National March on Washington for Palestine.Getty Images
In northern Gaza on Saturday, infantry and tanks encountered several groups of Hamas operatives emerging from tunnels to attack Israeli forces. In one incident, the IDF said, forces on the ground fought a group of 15 terrorists, killing several of them while shelling their observation post.
Hamas claims to have clashed with Israeli forces in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City — a sign that the IDF has advanced well into the densely populated center of Gaza, apparently in an effort to push all remaining civilians out and southward, according to BBC.
But two Israeli airstrikes landed outside a United Nations school in Gaza City that had been turned into a shelter, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees reported, killing several civilians.
Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Lebanon issued a security alert urging Americans to leave the country as the IDF released dramatic footage showing Israeli warplanes attacking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to shells fired from Lebanese territory earlier in the day.
Black smoke rises over Aita al-Shaab, a village in southern Lebanon, after Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah positions.AP
“Among the targets attacked, terrorist infrastructure, rocket warehouses, and compounds used by the organization,” IDF write in a note at X.
On Friday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah threatened to increase his terror group’s involvement in the war – but said it had “already done its part” by drawing Israeli forces north to the border with Lebanon.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant responded Saturday, warning Nasrallah not to “make a mistake.”
“We are not interested in getting involved in the war in the north, but we are ready for any task,” said Gallant. “If Nasrallah makes a mistake, he will seal the fate of Lebanon.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
