Israeli troops and armor moved deeper into the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, reaching built-up areas as UN and medical staff warned that airstrikes were closing in on hospitals, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter along with thousands of wounded.
The escalating ground operation comes a day after 33 trucks carrying food, medicine and other supplies entered Gaza from Egypt, the largest humanitarian aid convoy since the war between Israel and Hamas began.
Aid workers said on Monday that the aid was still short of what was needed in Gaza, which has been under siege for weeks.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians passed 8,000, mostly women and minors, as Israeli tanks and infantry pursued what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the “second stage” of the war sparked by Hamas’ brutal incursion on October 7.
The number of casualties is unprecedented in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
More than 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial attack, also an unprecedented figure.
An Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) armored vehicle waits as a bulldozer clears a strewn path in a location given as Gaza on Oct. 29. 2023. via REUTERS
Israeli forces appear to be driving deeper into Gaza from the north.
Video released Monday by the military showed armored vehicles moving between buildings and soldiers taking up positions inside a house.
The exact location is unknown, but military footage on Saturday showed troops moving through an empty sandy area near Gaza’s northern border fence.
A photo taken from the southern Israeli city of Sderot shows smoke rising during Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 29. 2023. AFP via Getty Images
The army said yesterday that its troops had killed dozens of militants who attacked from inside buildings and tunnels, and that the attack had destroyed a building that Hamas used as a staging post.
It said that in the past few days, it had struck more than 600 militant targets, including weapons depots and anti-tank missile launcher positions.
Targeting reports could not be independently verified.
Palestinians pray for the eight members of a Kurdish family killed in an Israeli airstrike before being taken for burial from Najjar Hospital, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 30. 2023. AFP via Getty Images
The military wing of Hamas said its militants were fighting Israeli forces that entered the northwestern Gaza Strip with small arms and anti-tank missiles.
Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into Israel, including towards its commercial hub, Tel Aviv.
Communications were restored to most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents Sunday after more than a day without phone and internet service amid a bombardment that residents described as the heaviest of the war.
An image released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Oct 29, 2023, shows its ground operations in the Gaza Strip. EyePress News/Shutterstock
Israel says most Gazans have obeyed its orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged territory, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north, in part because Israel has also bombed targets in the so-called safe zone.
More than 1.4 million people in Gaza have fled their homes.
The 33 trucks carrying food, water and medicine entered southern Gaza on Sunday from Egypt, an increase from about 20 a day that had been entering.
Aid workers have repeatedly said they need hundreds of trucks a day to meet the growing need.
On Saturday, people broke into four facilities of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, taking food supplies.
The breakdown is a “worrying sign that civil order is beginning to break down,” said Thomas White, UNRWA’s director in Gaza. “People are scared, frustrated and desperate.”
UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said the warehouse did not contain any fuel, which has been in short supply since Israel cut off all shipments.
Israel says Hamas will use it for military purposes and that the militant group is hoarding large fuel stocks in the region for itself. The claim could not be independently verified.
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Israel’s siege has pushed Gaza’s infrastructure to the brink of collapse.
Without central power for weeks, hospitals struggled to keep emergency generators working to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment. UNRWA is trying to keep water pumps and bakeries open.
Last week, UN officials said hunger was increasing.
President Joe Biden stressed to Netanyahu in a call Sunday “the need to urgently and significantly” increase the flow of humanitarian aid, the US said.
Israeli authorities said they would soon include more aid but did not specify the amount.
Elad Goren, head of public affairs at COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian public affairs, also said Israel had opened two water channels in southern Gaza in the past week.
The Associated Press could not independently verify that any of the lines were working.
Meanwhile, the overcrowded hospital in northern Gaza is increasingly threatened.
The UN said on Monday that attacks had hit near Shifa and Al-Quds hospitals in Gaza City and an Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza in recent days.
Pictures taken from the southern Israeli city of Sderot show rockets being fired from northern Gaza towards Israel on Oct. 30. 2023. AFP via Getty Images
All 10 hospitals still working in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders in recent days, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said.
Along with thousands of patients and staff, about 117,000 homeless people live in these facilities, he said.
Residents reported attacks near Shifa Hospital, the largest in the province, where tens of thousands of civilians have taken refuge.
Palestinian relatives of eight Kurdish family members killed in an Israeli airstrike, wait to take the family’s bodies for burial from Najjar Hospital, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 30. 2023. AFP via Getty Images
Israel has accused Hamas of having a secret command post under the hospital but has not provided much evidence. Hamas denies the allegations.
The attack struck within 50 meters (yards) of Al-Quds Hospital after it received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate, the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said.
Several windows were blown out, and the room was covered in debris. It is said that 14,000 people took shelter there.
A photo taken from southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip shows an Israeli army bulldozer crossing the border into Gaza, on Oct. 29. 2023. AFP via Getty Images
Israel ordered Al-Quds Hospital to evacuate more than a week ago, but it and other medical facilities have refused, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.
“Under no circumstances should a hospital be bombed,” the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Robert Mardini, told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
About 20,000 people are taking shelter at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, emergency director Dr. Mohammed Qandeel.
“I bring my children to sleep here,” said a displaced resident who gave her name only as Umm Ahmad. “I used to be afraid of my children playing in the sand. Now their hands are dirty with blood on the floor.”
Israeli airstrikes hit a two-story house in Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from one family.
The body was taken to Nasser Hospital, according to an AP reporter at the scene.
The military escalation has increased domestic pressure on the Israeli government to secure the release of 239 hostages seized by Hamas fighters during the Oct. 7 attack.
Hamas said it was ready to release all the hostages if Israel released all the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons.
Desperate family members of Israeli prisoners met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for the exchange. Israel has rejected Hamas’ offer.
“If Hamas does not feel military pressure, nothing will move forward,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the hostages’ families Sunday.
The Israeli military has stopped short of calling its gradually expanding ground operations inside Gaza an all-out invasion, but casualties on both sides are expected to rise sharply as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants battle in the densely populated residential area.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants are operating among civilians, putting them at risk.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Sunday called the suffering of civilians “profound.”
Karim Khan called on Israel to respect international law but stopped short of accusing it of war crimes.
He called the Hamas attack on October 7 a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
“The burden rests on those who aim the gun, missile or rocket,” he said. The ICC has been investigating the actions of the Israeli and Palestinian authorities since 2014.
The fighting has raised fears that violence could spread across the region. Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have been engaged in daily fighting along Israel’s northern border.
In the West Bank, at least four Palestinians were killed in clashes early Monday between Israeli and Palestinian forces in Jenin, the site of repeated Israeli attacks on gunmen.
As of Sunday, Israeli troops and settlers killed 115 Palestinians, including 33 minors, in the West Bank, half of them during Israeli search and arrest operations, UN OCHA said.
Israel’s military said earlier Monday that its aircraft hit military infrastructure in Syria after a rocket from there fell in open Israeli territory.
About 250,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes by violence along the border with Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon, according to the Israeli military.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
