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Key points
- Israel publishes pictures of tanks on Gaza coast.
- Hamas says it is engaging Israeli troops in Gaza, belittles reports of deep advances by enemy.
- Civil order is ‘starting to break down’ in Gaza, say United Nations.
- At least 59 UNRWA staff in Gaza killed.
- Some 8005 Palestinians have been killed, Hamas Health Authority says.
Jerusalem/Gaza: Israel signalled intent to encircle Gaza’s main city on Sunday, publishing pictures of battle tanks on the Palestinian enclave’s western coast 48 hours after ordering expanded ground incursions across its eastern border.
Israel’s self-declared “second phase” of a three-week war against Hamas militants had initially been kept from public view, with forces moving under darkness and a telecommunications blackout cutting off Palestinians.
Israeli tanks and troops move near the border with Gaza on October in Sderot, Israel.Credit: Getty
The phone and internet cuts appeared to be easing on Sunday, according to Gaza residents. But they have severely hampered rescue operations for casualties of Israeli barrages wreaking destruction, especially on northern Gaza City, site of Hamas’s government and command centres.
As well as the Israeli military’s pictures of tanks, some pictures online appeared to show Israeli soldiers waving an Israeli flag deep inside Gaza.
Reuters could not verify those images.
Hamas said it was firing mortars against Israeli forces in north Gaza and had hit Israeli tanks with missiles, belittling reports of deep advances by its enemy.
Israeli tanks take position along the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel.Credit: AP
“Israel cut us off from the world in order to wipe us out, but we are hearing the sounds of explosions and we are proud the resistance fighters have stopped them at metres distance,” said Shaban Ahmed, a public servant who stayed in Gaza City despite an Israeli warning to evacuate south.
Ahmed said he only found out on Sunday that his cousin had died in an air strike two days previously due to the blackout.
Israeli Defence Force (IDF) fighter jets struck over 450 Hamas targets, including operational command centres, look-out posts, and anti-tank missile launch posts, in the last 24 hours, the military said on Sunday.
Israeli Defence Force flares light up the sky above northern Gaza seen from Sderot, Israel. Credit: Getty
It said several gunmen emerged from a tunnel near Israel’s border and were killed or wounded in a clash with troops.
“We are gradually expanding the ground activity and the scope of our forces in the Gaza Strip,” said IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
Israel has tightened its blockade and bombarded Gaza since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border into Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages.
Medical authorities in the Gaza Strip, which has a population of 2.3 million people, said on Sunday 8005 people – including 3324 minors – had been killed.
Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, a task that it described as necessitating protracted ground assaults in, around and under Gaza City, where the militants have an extensive subterranean bunker network.
An Israeli Defence Forces bombardment strikes in northern Gaza near large areas covered in white smoke not believed to be caused by the bombardment on as seen from Sderot, Israel. Credit: Getty
Western countries have generally backed what they say is Israel’s right to self-defence. But there has been mounting international outcry over the toll from the bombing and calls for a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid to reach Gaza civilians.
There are fears too of regional overspill to the Gaza war, including in Lebanon where the Israeli army and Iranian-backed Hezbollah group have been exchanging fire.
On Sunday, the United Nations’ Lebanon peacekeeping force UNIFIL said one of its members was injured after shells hit the mission’s base near Houla on the Lebanese-Israeli border the day before.
Israel said there were several rocket or mortar launches from Lebanon at its territory, and that it was returning fire.
Palestinians injured in Israeli air raids arrive at Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza.Credit: Getty
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that Israel must use every means possible to distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas in Gaza.
He also urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “rein in” violence against innocent people in the occupied West Bank.
Pope Francis on Sunday called for a ceasefire and renewed his call for the release of all hostages.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron expressed concern about getting aid into Gaza during a phone call on Sunday, Sunak’s office said.
Israel will allow a dramatic increase in aid to Gaza in coming days and Palestinian civilians should head to a “humanitarian zone” in the south of the tiny territory, said Colonel Elad Goren of Cogat, the Israeli Defence Ministry agency that coordinates with the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday 10 Egyptian trucks carrying food and medicine had arrived in Gaza via the Rafah crossing, bringing the total number so far to 94, a small fraction of what is needed.
‘Breaking point’
Thousands of Gaza residents broke into UN warehouses on Sunday, grabbing flour and other essential items in a sign they had reached “breaking point”, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said.
One of the warehouses, located in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, is where UNRWA stores supplies delivered by humanitarian convoys crossing into Gaza from Egypt.
Footage from Khan Younis in southern Gaza showed men frantically carrying boxes and large bags out of a warehouse, hoisting them onto their shoulders or loading them onto their bicycles.
“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement.
Speaking to Reuters from Amman in Jordan, Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications, said the scenes at the warehouses and distribution centres showed people’s despair.
“This is an indication that people in Gaza have reached a breaking point,” she said. “The levels of frustration and despair are really very high, and people are hitting rock bottom when it comes to their patience, their ability to take more.”
Aid supplies to Gaza have been choked since Israel began bombarding the densely populated Palestinian enclave in response to a deadly attack by its ruling militant group Hamas on October 7.
Touma said UNRWA had been forced to reduce the scale of its humanitarian operation in the densely populated enclave because it could not distribute fuel to some medical facilities.
She said UNRWA had not received any additional supplies on Sunday.
“Those supplies are very, very little and they don’t correspond to the huge needs on the ground,” she said.
“We are asking for a standard and regular flow of humanitarian supplies, including fuel, and an increase in the number of trucks on these convoys.”
UNRWA has said its ability to help people in Gaza has been completely stretched by air strikes that have killed dozens of its staff and restricted the movement of supplies.
“Fifty-nine colleagues at UNRWA were killed during the war,” Touma said.
‘God have mercy’
Displaced Palestinians staying in tents in Gaza’s Khan Younis described dire living conditions, with little access to food and water and having to queue hours for the toilet.
“I wish God will have mercy on us and the war stops,” said Rami Al-Erqan, a father cradling his daughter, one of his six children. “We reached a state where we wish to have died under the rubble just to find some rest. Our life is torture.”
Central Israel also came under heavy rocket fire on Sunday, with sirens sounding in several major cities.
Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said on its Telegram account that it was “bombing Tel Aviv in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians”.
They later said their fighters had clashed with Israeli forces northwest of Gaza and had also set fire to two Israeli tanks. There was no immediate word from Israel on the claims.
The conflict has prompted large demonstrations worldwide in support of the Palestinians. On Sunday several thousand people rallied in Beirut to show solidarity with Gaza.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received warnings from Israeli authorities to immediately evacuate al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip, adding that raids conducted on Sunday had taken place just 50 metres from the facility.
The Red Crescent says some 14,000 people have sought shelter at the hospital from Israeli air strikes.
Israel has accused Hamas of locating command centres and other military infrastructure in Gaza hospitals, something the group denies.
Palestinian officials said around 50,000 people had also taken shelter in the Gaza Shifa Hospital and said they were concerned about ongoing Israeli threats to the facility.
Reuters
More coverage of the Hamas-Israel conflict
- Cascading violence: Tremors from the Hamas attacks and Israel’s response have reached far beyond the border. But what would all-out war in the Middle East look like?
- The human cost: Hamas’ massacre in Israel has traumatised – and hardened – survivors. And in Gaza, neighbourhoods have become ghost cities.
- “Hamas metro”: Inside the labyrinthine network of underground tunnels, which the Palestinian militant group has commanded beneath war-ravaged Gaza for 16 years. The covert corridors have long provided essential channels for the movement of weapons and armed combatants.
- What is Hezbollah?: As fears of the conflict expanding beyond Israel and Hamas steadily rise, all eyes are on the militant group and political party that controls southern Lebanon and has been designated internationally as a terrorist group. How did it form and what does Iran have to do with it?
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