Israel’s ground invasion ramps up as Gaza death toll surpasses 10K, Palestinian officials say
The Israeli army cut off northern Gaza from the rest of the besieged enclave on Monda🐭y and continued bombarding the te🐼rritory with air attacks as ground forces prepared to invade densely populated Gaza City.
The Israel Defense Forces said airstrikes had destroyed 450 Hamas targets and Israeli soldiers had taken control of a military compound in an escalation of its war on the terror group nearly a month after Hamas’ monstrous attack that killed more than 1,400.
Gaza health officials said that more than 10,000 Palestinians had been killed ꦗin the offensive, without distinguishing fatalities between civilians and militants.
Hamas claimed that 4,100 of the victims were children and 2,600 of them were women. The group, however, has been accused by the US of overinflating its death toll.
An additional 2,300 people were said to be missing and believed t🅘o be buried under debris.
Israel said several Hamas commanders had been killed in the recent blitzes, and blamed its adversary for civilian deaths because the group operates in resident🐻ialꦚ areas.
A new expected stage of urban com♌bat would sharply increase casualties in the crippled disputed territory. The region has not seen this much bloodshed since the Arab-Israeli War ended in 1949 following the creation of the Jewish state.
“We’re closing in ꦬon them,” s🐻aid Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman. “We’ve completed our encirclement, separating Hamas strongholds in the north from the south.”
Hundreds of thousands of civilians remained in the dar♌kened path of the ground invasion. Israel said an evacuation corridor in the Southern portion of the narrow🌟 territory was still available for refugees. However, attacks on the supposed safe zone killed dozens of people Sunday.
Seventy percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have fled their homes amid the war and are grappling with depleted supplies of food, medicine, fuel and water 🧔amid the desperate situation, according to the United Nations. Cell phone and internet service and internet were gradually restored Monday after going down in the overnight blitze💞s.
Airstrikes in recent days hav𓄧e hit UN facilities used by tho🐷usands as shelters and hospitals inundated by wounded victims and facing shortages of electricity and supplies.
A 🌳Monday strike on Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital killed an unknown amount of people seeking shelter and knocked out solar panels that were largely providing power to the medical center, which had been down to only one generator.
The buildings shook all night, according to surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta, who said, “We started getting the bodies and the wounded. It was horrendous.”
An unknown amount of 💦people were buried in the rubb🃏le following strikes that hit the Mediterranean coast Shati refugee camp, according to recent evacuees.
Eighteen UN agency and aid organization leaders issued a Sunday demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and declaring “enough is enough” of the violence in the region. Only 450 aide trucks had been allowed to enter Gaza through Egypt since Oct. 21.
“An entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essentials for survival, bombed in their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship. This is unaccep🦩table,” the joint statement said, adding that scores of aide workers had also been killed.
President Joe Biden urged Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to consider pausing his assault to allow for more humanitarian supplies and as a bargaining chip for the release of some of Hamas’ hundreds of hostages. The proposal, and the call for a broader cease-fire from neighboring Arab nations, were rejected by Israel, according to the White House.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken left the region Monday, saying his diplomatic efforts to negotiate the release of the prisoners captured in the raid and set up the governance of a post-Hamas Gaza remained “a work in progress.”
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, another Palestinian faction tied to Hamas and backed by Iran, traded fire with Israel after launching an attack from the north on the cities of Nahariya and Haifa in retaliation for the IDF’s invasion.
In the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Israeli forces shot and killed four Palestinian men in a vehicle, accordinꦐg ಞto the Palestinian Health Ministry. Two of them were high-ranking militants, the IDF said.
East Je🏅rusalem, a Palestinian man had stabbed two I🥀sraeli border guards before being shot dead, as tensions flared.
With Post wires
