- Palestinian health ministry says death toll crosses 7,326 including 3,500 children in Gaza
- United Nations warns of a looming “unprecedented avalanche of human sufferings
JERUSALEM/GAZA: Hamas said on Saturday its fighters in Gaza were ready to confront Israeli attacks with “full force” after Israel’s military widened its air and ground attacks on the Palestinian enclave amid a cutoff in internet and phone services – which telecoms firms and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said was a result of Israeli bombardments – had been continuing for more than 12 hours.
The Palestinian group that rules Gaza had said its fighters were clashing with Israeli troops in areas near the border with Israel after Israel reported intensified attacks in Gaza.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli strikes had killed 7,703 people, mainly civilians, including more than 3,500 children in the conflict so far – the fifth and deadliest in Gaza since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Palestinian territory in 2005.
“In addition to the attacks carried out in the last few days, ground forces are expanding their operations tonight,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said at a televised news briefing, raising the question whether a long-anticipated ground invasion of Gaza might be starting.
He said Israel’s air force was conducting extensive strikes on tunnels dug by Hamas and on other infrastructure.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had killed the head of Hamas’ aerial wing, who had helped plan the Oct. 7 attack by the Islamist group on Israel’s southern towns.
The Israeli Defence Forces said its fighter jets struck Asem Abu Rakaba, head of the Hamas Aerial Array, who was responsible for Hamas’ UAVs, drones, paragliders, aerial detection and aerial defence.
“He took part in planning the massacre in the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip on October 7th. He directed the terrorists who infiltrated Israel on paragliders and was responsible for the drone attacks on IDF posts,” the IDF said.
‘BLACKED OUT’
In a live satellite TV broadcast from Gaza on Saturday morning, an Al Jazeera correspondent described the cut in internet and phone communications as “catastrophic” for rescue efforts following a night of heavy Israeli bombardment.
Unable to reach ambulance services, Palestinians were transporting the dead and injured to hospital in their cars, the correspondent said.
“Gaza is currently blacked out,” said Paltel, the largest telecommunications provider in Gaza.
The Red Crescent Society said it had lost contact with its Gaza operations room and its teams operating there. The Hamas-run government said rescue crews were unable to receive emergency calls.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said it had been unable to reach some Palestinian colleagues and that it was particularly worried for “patients, medical staff and thousands of families taking shelter at Al Shifa hospital and other health facilities.”
The head of the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF, Catherine Russell, said her agency too could no longer communicate with staff in Gaza.
Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC that Israel was starting its payback against Hamas and “Gaza will feel our wrath tonight.”
“They will continue to be on the receiving end of our military blows until we have dismantled their military machine and dissolve their political structure in Gaza,” he told Fox News. “When this is over, Gaza will be very different.”
Concerns about a risk of a wider Middle East conflict have risen in recent days with the U.S. dispatching more military assets to the region as Israel pummelled targets in Gaza and Hamas supporters in Lebanon and Syria.
Much of the infrastructure of Gaza, which has been living under blockade by Israel and Egypt since 2007, has been shattered by Israeli bombing.
Palestinians said they received renewed Israeli military warnings to move from Gaza’s north to the south to avoid the deadliest theatre of the war.
Making the journey south remains highly risky amid air strikes and southern areas have also been bombed, Gaza residents said.
Many families have refused to leave, fearing a repeat of the experience of previous wars with Israel when Palestinians who left their homes and land were never able to return.
‘Fighters clashing with Israeli troops in Beit Hanoun and Al-Bureij’
The armed wing of Hamas said its fighters were clashing with Israeli troops in Gaza’s northeastern town of Beit Hanoun and in the central area of Al-Bureij.
“Netanyahu and his defeated army will not be able to achieve any military victory,” Hamas said in a statement early on Saturday, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli ground forces had massed outside Gaza, where Israel has been conducting an intense campaign of aerial bombardment since the Oct. 7 attack. Israel says 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 200 taken hostage, some of them foreign nationals or with dual Israeli nationality.
Since then, Palestinian health authorities say, Israeli bombing has killed more than 7,000 Palestinians.
Al Jazeera, which was broadcasting live footage overnight showing frequent blasts in Gaza, said Israeli air strikes had hit areas around the enclave’s main hospital.
Reuters could not verify the reports of the strikes near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Israel’s military accused Hamas on Friday of using the hospital as a shield for its tunnels and operational centres, an allegation the group denied.
‘Unprecedented Avalanche of Human Sufferings’
The United Nations warned of a looming “unprecedented avalanche of human sufferings” inside the Gaza Strip, after weeks of relentless Israeli bombing, while the General Assembly called for an “immediate humanitarian truce”.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned on Saturday that there was the potential for thousands more civilians to die as Israel presses a ground operation in Gaza.
“Given the manner in which military operations have been conducted until now, in the context of the 56-year-old occupation, I am raising alarm about the possibly catastrophic consequences of large-scale ground operations in Gaza and the potential for thousands more civilians to die,” he said.
Israel’s army relentlessly hammered Gaza on Saturday after a fierce overnight bombardment that rescuers said destroyed hundreds of buildings three weeks into a war sparked by the deadliest attack in the country’s history.
Israel unleashed its bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, killing 1,400 people.
UN overwhelmingly calls for aid truce between Israel and Hamas
Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas and demanded aid access to the besieged Gaza Strip and protection of civilians.
The resolution drafted by Arab states is not binding but carries political weight, taking the global temperature as Israel steps up ground operations in Gaza in retaliation for the worst Hamas attack on civilians in Israel’s 75-year-old history.
It passed to a round of applause with 120 votes in favour, while 45 abstained and 14 – including Israel and the United States – voted no. Iraq later changed its vote to yes from an abstention after complaining of a technical difficulty, so the final tally was 121 votes in favour and 44 abstentions.
A two-thirds majority was needed for the resolution to pass, in which abstentions do not count. The General Assembly voted after the Security Council failed four times in the past two weeks to take action.
“It sends the message to everyone enough is enough. This war has to stop, the carnage against our people has to stop and humanitarian assistance should begin to enter the Gaza Strip,” Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan rejected the resolution, saying the UN no longer holds any legitimacy or relevance and accused those who voted yes of preferring to support “the defence of Nazi terrorists” instead of Israel.
“This ridiculous resolution has the audacity to call for truce. The goal of this resolution truce is that Israel should cease to defend itself to Hamas, so Hamas can light us on fire,” he told the General Assembly after the vote.
A Canadian-led bid to amend the resolution to include a rejection and condemnation of the “terrorist attacks by Hamas … and the taking of hostages” failed to get the two thirds majority needed, garnering 88 votes in favour, 55 against and 23 abstentions.
Assembly stresses preventing wider war
As fears grow that the conflict could spark a wider war, the assembly stressed the “importance of preventing further destabilisation and escalation of violence in the region” and called on “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and upon all those with influence on them to work toward this objective.”
The General Assembly called on Israel to rescind its order for civilians in Gaza to move to the south of the enclave. Israel ordered some 1.1 million people in Gaza – almost half the population – to move south on Oct. 12.
The General Assembly also “firmly rejects any attempts at the forced transfer of the Palestinian civilian population.”
The General Assembly called for “the immediate and unconditional release of all civilians who are being illegally held captive.” It did not name Hamas anywhere in the text.
‘Confronting Israeli ground incursion in northern and centre of Gaza Strip’
“We are confronting an Israeli ground incursion in Beit Hanoun (in the northern Gaza Strip) and east Bureij (in the centre) and violent engagements are taking place on the ground,” Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said.
Israeli military spokesman Major Nir Dinar told AFP: “Our troops are operating inside Gaza as they did yesterday.”
With tens of thousands of troops massed along the Gaza border ahead of an expected full-blown invasion, Israeli forces had also made limited ground incursions on Wednesday and Thursday nights.
“The ground forces are extending the ground operations tonight,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Friday.
The Israeli army said it had increased its strikes “in a very significant way”, while the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said on Telegram it responded with “salvos of rockets”.
In overnight raids, Israeli fighter jets hit 150 “terror tunnels, underground combat spaces and additional underground infrastructure” and “several Hamas terrorists were killed”, the army claimed on Saturday morning.
AFP live footage had shown air strike after air strike light up the night sky of northern Gaza late Friday as thick black smoke clouded the horizon.
In a bombed-out street in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood, 50-year-old Om Walid Basal said her apartment block had been destroyed by Israel.
“This was our house. We lived here just with our children. It was full of children,” she said. “Why are they bombing us? Why are they destroying our homes?”
Hamas insisted it was “ready” for an invasion.
“If (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu decides to enter Gaza tonight, the resistance is ready,” Ezzat al-Rishaq, a senior member of the Hamas political bureau, said on Telegram.
“The remains of his soldiers will be swallowed up by the land of Gaza.”
Hamas said all internet connections and communications across Gaza had been cut, and accused Israel of taking the measure “to perpetrate massacres with bloody retaliatory strikes from the air, land and sea”.
Human Rights Watch also warned the near-total telecommunications blackout in Gaza risks providing cover for “mass atrocities”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the communications outage had disrupted ambulance services.
“We have completely lost contact with the operations room in the Gaza Strip and all our teams operating there,” it said on X, formerly Twitter.
Lynne Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, also stressed on X that “hospitals & humanitarian operations can’t continue without communications”.
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf, whose inlaws are trapped in Gaza, voiced alarm at the communications shutdown.
“Telecommunications have been cut. We can’t get through to our family who have been trapped in this war zone for almost 3 weeks,” he wrote on X.
“We can only pray they survive the night.”
The reports of ground fighting came after the UN General Assembly called on Friday for an “immediate humanitarian truce” in Gaza.
The non-binding resolution received overwhelming support, with 120 votes in favour, 14 against and 45 abstentions.
“Today the General Assembly declared a call: stop the war,” the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
It was also welcomed by Hamas, but it was harshly criticised by Israel and the United States for failing to mention Hamas, with Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan calling it an “infamy”.
Washington had earlier said it supports a “humanitarian pause” so aid can get into Gaza.
Israel’s bombardment has displaced more than 1.4 million people inside the crowded territory, according to the UN, even as supplies of food, water and power to Gaza have been almost completely cut off.
And Israel has blocked all deliveries of fuel, saying it would be exploited by Hamas to manufacture weapons and explosives.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that misery was “growing by the minute”.
“I repeat my call for a humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the delivery of life-saving supplies,” Guterres said.
“Without a fundamental change, the people of Gaza will face an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has cautioned that “many more will die” in Gaza from catastrophic shortages.
“People in Gaza are dying, they are not only dying from bombs and strikes, soon many more will die from the consequences of (the) siege,” said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
A first tranche of critically needed aid was allowed in last weekend, but only 74 trucks have crossed since then. The UN says an average of 500 trucks entered Gaza every day before the conflict.
“These few trucks are nothing more than crumbs that will not make a difference,” Lazzarini said.
Between the bombardments and the fuel shortages, 12 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals have been forced to close, and UNRWA said it has had to “significantly reduce its operations”.
Israel’s military accused Hamas of using hospitals in Gaza as operations centres for directing attacks, an allegation Hamas swiftly denied.
The growing toll in Gaza has spurred demonstrations in the occupied West Bank and across the Muslim world, but also in a number of Western countries.
Late Friday, hundreds of people were arrested when police broke up a large demonstration of mostly Jewish New Yorkers who had taken over the main hall of Grand Central station to protest Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and demanding a ceasefire.
Violence has also risen sharply in the occupied West Bank since the October 7 attacks, with more than 100 Palestinians killed and nearly 2,000 wounded, according to the UN.
