Israel sends tanks back into northern Gaza months after ‘clearing out’ Hamas
Israel has launched a new offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza in areas that the military previously said had been cleared of militants months ago.
Israeli tanks have gone back into Jabalia in northern Gaza, Palestinian residents said as operations continued in parts of Rafah in the south of the Strip.
Residents said war planes and artillery had struck the camp as well as the Zeitoun neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, where troops have been fighting militants for several days.
Palestinians reported heavy Israeli bombardment overnight in the Jabalia refugee camp and other parts in the north, with 19 people killed and many more wounded, according to Palestinian health officials. The figures have not been independently verified.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) warned the civilian population to temporarily evacuate the area and move to shelters in western Gaza City. Jabalia is home to about 100,000 people.
The IDF said this was in response to “attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area”.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s spokesman, said: “We identified in the past weeks attempts by Hamas to rehabilitate its military capabilities in Jabalia. We are operating there to eliminate those attempts.”
He said: “Before the entry of the forces, fighter jets and aircraft of the Air Force attacked about 30 terrorist targets in the area and eliminated a number of terrorists from the terrorist organisation Hamas.”
He added that Israeli forces operating in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district had killed about 30 Palestinian militants. In an IDF update, he said troops in Zeitoun “continue against infrastructure and Hamas terrorists in the area. During the last day, the fighters eliminated a number of terrorists in face-to-face encounters, in air force aircraft strikes, additional terrorists were eliminated and weapons and terrorist infrastructure were destroyed.”
He said troops were also operating in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia near Gaza’s north border with Israel.
In January, Israel declared that it had destroyed Hamas as a fighting force in northern Gaza, dismantling 12 battalions and killing 8,000 militants. “We have completed the dismantling of Hamas’s military framework in the northern Gaza Strip and will continue to deepen the achievement,” Rear Admiral Hagari said at the time.
The head of the United Nations World Food Programme said northern Gaza had entered “full-blown famine” after nearly seven months of war. Cindy McCain said Israeli restrictions on humanitarian deliveries to the territory had pushed civilians in the most isolated part of Gaza to the brink.
The IDF’s offensive in the north came at the same time as the IDF urged the population of additional areas of Rafah to temporarily evacuate the city to the “expanded humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi”, a largely barren, ruined stretch of land near the coast.
The IDF said it was continuing with what it called “precise operations” in specific areas of eastern Rafah “following terrorist activities and fire carried out by Hamas from the area”. It added that so far approximately 300,000 Gazans have moved from the area to al-Mawasi.
About half the 2.3 million population of Gaza had been based in Rafah, many of them displaced from elsewhere in the Strip, meaning an estimated one million people are still in Rafah.
Rear Admiral Hagari: Our operations against Hamas in Rafah remains limited in scope and focused on tactical advances, tactical adjustments and key military advantages and have avoided densely populated areas
“Since the start of our operation ‘we have eliminated dozens of terrorists, exposed underground terror tunnels and vast amounts of weapons.”
