Israeli troops surround Gaza City, preparing to enter
Israeli troops have surrounded Gaza City and cut off the northern part of the besieged territory as communications were lost for several hours across Gaza overnight.
Israeli forces conducting ground operations in the Gaza Strip, Nov. 4, 2023. Credit: IDF.
Troops are expected to enter the city Monday or Tuesday, Israeli media reported, and militants who have prepared for years are expected to fight street by street using a vast network of tunnels.
Casualties will likely rise on both sides in the month-old war, which has already killed more than 9,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Some 1.5 million Palestinians, or around 70 per cent of the population, have fled their homes since the war began with a bloody Hamas incursion into Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and UN-run schools-turned-shelters are beyond capacity, with many sleeping on the streets outside.
Israel has so far rejected US suggestions for a pause in fighting to facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries and the release of some of the estimated 240 captives seized by Hamas in its October 7 raid.
It has also dismissed calls for a broader ceasefire from increasingly alarmed Arab countries — including Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with it decades ago.
A Jordanian military cargo plane air-dropped medical aid to a field hospital in northern Gaza, King Abdullah II said early Monday. It appeared to be the first such airdrop of the war, raising the possibility of another avenue for aid delivery besides Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza.
The situation remains dire in the north. Some 800,000 people have heeded Israeli military orders to flee to southern Gaza, even though Israel had continued airstrikes in the area. Strikes in central and southern Gaza — the purported safe zone — killed at least 53 people on Sunday.
Hundreds of thousands remain in Gaza City and other parts of the north. Some 2,000 people, many carrying only what they could hold in their arms, walked down Gaza’s main north-south highway on Sunday during an hours-long window in which the military had encouraged them to flee.
The Israeli military said late on Sunday that it had severed northern Gaza from the south, calling it a “significant stage” in the war. It said a one-way corridor for residents to flee south would remain available.
AAP
Invasion is often easier than the occupation as the Americans and Soviets before them found out in Afghanistan.