Israeli tanks and aircraft hit targets in southern and central Gaza on Sunday and there were fierce gun battles in some areas as the war reached 100 days since the Oct. 7 attack led by gunmen from the Islamist Hamas movement.
Communications and internet services were down for the third day running, complicating the work of emergency and ambulance crews trying to help people in areas hit by fighting.
Fighting was concentrated in the southern city of Khan Younis, where Hamas said its fighters hit an Israeli tank, as well as in Al-Bureij and Al Maghazi in central Gaza, where the military said several fighters were killed.
The military also said it destroyed several silos used by Hamas to fire missiles at Israel. Hamas showed it retained rocketry capacity, launching a fresh salvo at Ashdod, an Israeli town 40 km (25 miles) away. There was no word of any casualties.
Over the past 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said 125 people had been killed and 265 wounded, bringing the total number confirmed to have been killed since the start of the war to almost 24,000, with more than 60,000 wounded.
The Israeli military says it has shifted to a new phase of the war, focused on the southern end of the territory, where almost 2 million people are now sheltering in tents and other temporary accommodation, after the initial phase centered on clearing the northern end including Gaza City.
In the northern Gaza Strip, health officials said an Israeli air strike killed a local journalist, raising the number of journalists killed in the Israeli offensive to more than 100, according to the Gaza government media office.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off calls for a ceasefire, saying Israel will keep going until it achieves complete victory over Gaza. The military says, though, the next phase of the war will see months of more targeted operations against the Palestinians.
On Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where there has been a constant, low-level exchange of fire between troops and fighters from the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, the military said it killed four armed militants trying to cross the border.
It said several anti-tank missiles (?) were fired into northern Israel, one of which hit a house in the village of Kfar Yuval. Medical officials said a 76-year-old woman and her son were killed.
The war in Gaza has also stoked violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces killed three Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, in two separate incidents in Hebron and Jericho in the West Bank.
The Israeli military said two Palestinians in a car rammed through one of its hostile checkpoints near Hebron and opened fire on pursuing troops.
They were killed by return fire, the military statement said. There was no immediate comment on the 14-year-old boy’s death in Jericho.
In Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Nana, a 17-year-old high school student displaced from northern Gaza, said 100 days of war turned our life upside down.
We demand the occupation not only to end the war but also compensation for the psychological damage of displacement and the hardships endured, during this of the scale destruction of the Gaza Strip.
Reuters / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
The evil Zionist plan is to push the entire Gaza population into the Sinai desert, so Israel can freely explore the gas fields in front of the Gaza coastline!