Israel bombarded overnight areas of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, adding to fighting throughout Sunday morning according to residents and Palestinian media sources. Also announced were rising death tolls by both Gaza health authorities and Israeli military officials.
Israel says it has almost complete operational control over northern Gaza and is preparing to launch a ground offensive against Hamas fighters in areas other than the one now being attacked.
Yet Jabalia residents say that there has been continual bombing from the air and continued shell fire by Israeli tanks, which moved deeper into town on Saturday. A spokesman for the Gaza health ministry said on Sunday that 166 Palestinians had been killed in the past 24 hours, raising the total Palestinian death toll to 20,424.
More than tens of thousands have been injured, with many dead bodies believed still trapped under rubble. In Gaza, almost all of the 2.3 million people have been displaced. The Israeli military said it had lost nine soldiers in the past day alone, bringing to 155 its published combat losses since initiating a ground offensive over three weeks ago as retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage into Israel during which fighters killed more than one thousand people and took nearly two hundred hostages.
The daily death toll in this operation thus far has been one of the highest for Israeli ground forces ever. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this was a hard morning, after yesterday–after an entire day of fighting in Gaza. The war is coming at a huge price for us, but we have no choice (but) to continue fighting.
On Saturday the White House said that US President Joe Biden and Netanyahu had talked about the Israeli campaign. The White House said in a statement that Biden expressed a critical need to protect the civilian population, including those supporting humanitarian aid operations, and stressed allowing civilians room to move away from areas of fighting.
According to the White House, “The leaders stressed that it was necessary to secure the release of all remaining hostages.” Mediators from Egypt and Qatar have been working hard to break the deadlock that has resulted in so much violent bloodletting. On Sunday an official of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, which also holds captives in custody at Gaza, told Reuters that a delegation had come to Cairo for discussions with Egyptian officials about how to halt Israeli aggression against our people in Gaza.
On Sunday in a statement at his weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu laughed off reports that the United States had discouraged Israel from taking its military campaign further. Biden succeeded in convincing Netanyahu that Hezbollah would retaliate by attacking Israel if he attacked first, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Netanyahu: Israel is a sovereign state. Decisions made in wartime are based on operational considerations, and I’m not going to discuss that.
Israel has for years urged residents to leave the northern parts of Gaza. The IDF, however, also continues bombarding targets in central and southern portions of the enclave. At the Bureij refugee camp, in the center of the Gaza Strip; six Palestinians were killed and several wounded when an Israeli air strike hit a house. French medics say that before this attack, the Israelis ordered Palestinians to leave their homes and head west toward Deir Al-Balah city. Joudat Imad, 55 years old and father of six children, had to relocate from an area in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza after the army published a map marking it as a place people must leave.
In Rafah, he was able to get a tent and told Reuters by telephone. ‘This brutal war has transformed the owner of two buildings into a refugee in a tent awaiting aid. The world is sick, and its inhumanity won’t take good sight; otherwise, it would see Israel’s crimes here, but cannot help us to stop this war of destruction and starvation.’ An air strike by Israelis in Rafah on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt killed two people, according to Palestinian medics.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported an attack on one of its main bases in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis. It also stated that a 13-year-old child was killed by an Israeli drone inside the Al Amal Hospital. In this way, the Israeli military has expressed regret at civilian deaths but pointed out that Hamas operates in densely populated areas or uses civilians as human shields, an allegation they deny.
Former Israeli ground forces commander Yiftah Ron-Tal said the built-up Gaza battlefield was “the most complicated and fortified in the world, ” requiring infantry as well as tanks, artillery, and engineer corps.
army radio What is going on there now, he told the broadcaster, shakes me to my core because I think this came about after a very hard struggle in heavy fighting caused great losses. The violence has escalated, with Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi forces firing missiles and drones at vessels plying the Red Sea in retaliation for Israel’s strike against Gaza.
US Central Command said on Saturday that four drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen had been shot down while they attacked a US destroyer in the southern Red Sea, bringing to 15 the number of such attacks targeting commercial shipping.
On Saturday, the US Defense Department reported that a drone launched from Iran had struck a chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean.
