2023-10-28 02:11:26
The Israeli army announced that this Friday it expanded its ground operations in the Gaza Strip, governed by the Palestinian and extremist Islamist movement Hamas, which said it was prepared to face an invasion and at night announced “intense fighting.”
Also read: European Union leaders agreed to call for humanitarian corridors in the Gaza Strip
The international community expressed its concern about the humanitarian situation in the enclave, bombed and besieged by Israel in response to the lethal attack launched from there by Hamas on October 7.
The UN General Assembly approved a resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian truce,” in response to which Israel considered that resolution to be an “infamy.”
Hamas, which had called on the international community to mobilize “to stop Israeli crimes and massacres,” welcomed the resolution. The United States came out in favor of a “humanitarian pause” to let aid into Gaza.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “without a fundamental change in the situation, the people of Gaza will suffer an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering.”
The war began on October 7 with the raid of Hamas commandos who, according to Israel, killed more than 1,400 people in the south of the country, mostly civilians, and kidnapped more than 220 taken hostage to Gaza.
In retaliation, Israel unleashed a campaign of incessant bombing, which according to Hamas, left more than 7,300 dead, including more than 3,000 children.
The Islamist group claimed that “about 50” hostages were killed by the Israeli bombings. Israel also imposed a practically total siege of that territory of 362 km2 and more than 2.3 million inhabitants.
Israel to intensify bombing
The Israeli army indicated that it had increased shelling “very significantly” and announced that it would “expand its ground operations tonight,” after two straight nights of tank raids.
The bombings were concentrated in particular on Gaza City, in the north of the Strip, AFP videos showed.
A few hours later, Hamas reported clashes in two sectors of the Strip. “We faced Israeli ground incursions in Beit Hanun (north) and al Bureij (center). Intense fighting is taking place,” they expressed.
“And [el primer ministro israelí, Benjamin] Netanyahu decides to enter Gaza tonight, the resistance is prepared,” a Hamas leader, Ezzat al Risheq, declared on Telegram. “The land of Gaza will swallow the remains of the” Israeli soldiers, he added.
Hamas further stated that Israel “cut off communications and most of the internet,” “to carry out massacres with retaliatory bombings by air, land and sea.”
Thousands of people demonstrated on Friday in the occupied West Bank and several Arab countries in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
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