2023-10-28 13:05:24
On the 22nd day of the war between Israel and Hamas, fighting has raged for several hours in the Gaza Strip. Despite the difficulties in obtaining clear information – communications and Internet have been cut in Gaza – here is what we know about the situation this Saturday morning.
“IDF forces have entered Gaza and expanded their operations,” announced Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army in the morning at a press conference. The army will “continue to carry out a large-scale attack from the air, the sea and by killing terrorists”.
In the early morning, the Israeli army announced that it had struck 150 underground targets. “Overnight (Friday to Saturday), IDF fighter jets struck 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip, including tunnels used by terrorists, underground combat sites and “other underground infrastructure,” she assured, in a press release this Saturday morning.
Israel is convinced that the Palestinian Islamist movement directs and organizes its operations from this gigantic network of underground tunnels, and stores its arsenal there. Since the 2014 war, Hamas has dug underground routes within the territory itself, according to military experts. Fighters would be installed there up to 30 or 40 meters underground, and move around there out of range of strikes. Rocket launcher batteries hidden a few meters deep can exit through a trapdoor system to fire and disappear again, according to military experts.
On Friday, Israel said it had intensified its bombings “in a very significant way”, in what amounts to the start of the “land invasion” announced at the start of the war, on October 7.
Artillery tanks and fighter planes
According to AFP journalists positioned in the area, the bombings continued this Saturday morning on the Gaza Strip, but less intensively than during the night. According to one of them, based in Ashkelon (in the south of Israel, less than ten kilometers from the border), hours of continuous bombings and strikes caused the windows to shake in the night.
Smoke and an acrid burning smell filled the air at sunrise in Ashkelon and Sderot, while fighter jets continued to fly at low altitude and detonations could be heard coming from Gaza. An imposing column of black smoke was visible above Gaza City.
According to journalists from AFP and the Guardian who are located next to the border of the Gaza Strip, the bombings of the night came from artillery tanks but also from the sea and the air, via fighter planes. Although the morning is calmer, sporadic explosions still take place.
Communications and Internet were cut in the Palestinian enclave. This cut, coupled with the intensification of bombings “augurs new killings that the occupier intends to commit away from the gaze of the media and the world,” Hamas chanted on Friday.
According to several testimonies that AFP was able to collect, the most violent Israeli bombings of the night were concentrated on areas around two hospitals, al-Shifa in Gaza City and the so-called “Indonesian” hospital because it was built thanks to to donations from Indonesia, in the Jabaliya sector further north. The raids destroyed many buildings and left huge craters in completely smashed streets.
Death of Hamas leader announced
“Hundreds of buildings and houses were completely destroyed and thousands of other homes were damaged,” Mahmoud Bassal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defense, told AFP. The intense bombardments of the night “changed the landscape of Gaza and the northern governorates,” he added.
“Several Hamas terrorists were killed,” Israel said in its statement. On Twitter, the Israeli army claims to have targeted the head of Hamas air training, Asem Abu Rakaba, during the night.
“Asem Abou Rakaba took part in the organization of the massacre in the communities bordering the Gaza Strip on October 7,” the IDF text specifies. He led terrorists who infiltrated Israel with paramotors and was responsible for drone attacks on IDF surveillance posts. »
More contact with the population
The UN General Assembly on Friday called by a large majority for an “immediate humanitarian truce”, a non-binding resolution described as “infamy” by Israel but welcomed by Hamas.
The cutoff of telecommunications and the internet in the Gaza Strip “risks serving as a cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations,” deplores an official from the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, Deborah Brown, in a press release. “We are witnessing quite clearly the killing of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of civilians, including humanitarian actors,” Jean-François Corty, doctor, vice-president of Médecins du Monde, warned on franceinfo on Saturday. .
The cut “means that it will be even more difficult to obtain essential information and evidence on human rights violations and war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” regrets Amnesty International, which says it has lost contact with his staff in Gaza.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday called on Israel to “immediately stop this madness” and put an end to its attacks,” inviting a rally in support of the Palestinians organized by his party this Saturday in Istanbul.
Families of hostages “worried”
The families of the hostages, mostly Israeli, held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip expressed their “concern” on Saturday and demanded explanations from the government after the bombings.
“Every minute seems like an eternity. We demand that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and members of the war cabinet meet with us this morning (this Saturday),” according to a statement from the association bringing together the families of more than 220 hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.
The Forum expresses its “enormous anger that none of the members of the war cabinet took the trouble to meet the families of the hostages to explain one thing to them: does the ground operation endanger the 229 hostages” identified by the authorities.
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