Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Saturday that the war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas had “entered a new phase,” three weeks after the start of a war sparked by the deadliest attack in history of Israel. The Israeli army warned on Saturday that it now considers Gaza and its region a “battlefield” and ordered residents to “immediately leave” towards the south.
What there is to know
- On Friday evening, Israel launched an all-out attack on the Gaza Strip. Internet and cellular communications have been cut in the Palestinian enclave;
- The Israeli army announced that it had “hit 150 underground targets” in the north of the Gaza Strip, where according to it Hamas directs its operations from a gigantic network of underground tunnels;
- The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, but without condemning the October 7 attack by Hamas, as Canada proposed in an amendment;
- More than 9,100 people have been killed on both sides since October 7.
The UN has said it fears an “avalanche of human suffering” in the Gaza Strip, where some 2.4 million inhabitants are crowded together, lacking water, food and electricity, and who have found themselves without food since Friday. communications or internet.
Since October 7, the Israeli army has been relentlessly shelling the small Palestinian territory in retaliation for the Hamas attack since which more than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, mainly civilians, according to local authorities.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, said 7,703 people, mostly civilians, had been killed in Israeli bombings, the heaviest toll since Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territory in 2005, after 38 years of occupation.
The Israeli army continuously bombarded the Gaza Strip overnight from Friday to Saturday and carried out a ground incursion into the territory of approximately 360 m2.
In all, “150 underground targets” were struck in the north of the Gaza Strip where, according to the army, Hamas directs its operations from a gigantic network of underground tunnels.
She reported “several Hamas terrorists killed” including a leader “who took part in the organization of the October 7 massacre” which deeply traumatized Israeli society.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People search through the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli strikes on the Shati camp in Gaza City on October 28.
According to the spokesperson for Civil Defense in Gaza, Mahmoud Bassal, “hundreds of buildings and houses were completely destroyed” in the nighttime raids.
The heaviest bombings, according to testimonies, focused on areas around two hospitals, al-Shifa in Gaza City and another in the Jabaliya area in the northern Gaza Strip.
“We used to call our loved ones to see how they were doing, but last night we couldn’t do that. In the streets, people have become lifeless bodies walking,” says Djihad Mahdi, a resident of Gaza City.
“It was bombing everywhere”
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People gather amid debris piled up in the middle of a street following Israeli strikes on the Shati camp in Gaza City on October 28.
In the Shati refugee camp, within the limits of Gaza City, the bombings caused significant damage.
“What happened in Chati is worse than an earthquake,” resident Alaa Mahdi, 54, told AFP. “It was bombarding everywhere, the navy, the artillery and the planes. Who are they hitting, the resistance? No, poor people. »
The bombings continued on Saturday against Gaza after strikes on southern Israel which shook the city of Ashkelon, close to Gaza, according to AFP journalists.
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.
PHOTO ARIS MESSINIS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
This photo taken near the southern Israeli town of Sderot shows smoke rising during an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip on October 28.
During the night, Hamas, which said it was “ready” to face an Israeli ground offensive announced for days, reported clashes between its fighters and soldiers in Beit Hanoun (north) and al-Boureij (center), and fired salvos of rockets towards Israel.
After announcing a “significant intensification of its strikes” on Friday evening, the army confirmed on Saturday that its forces had “entered Gaza and expanded their operations there”, following two incursions with armored vehicles over the previous two nights.
“We will continue to bomb from the air and the sea,” said army spokesman Daniel Hagari.
“Anguish” of hostage families
At the end of “a night of immense anguish”, the families of the hostages, the majority Israeli, held by Hamas in Gaza said they were “worried” about their fate and demanded explanations from the government.
According to the army, nearly 230 people, Israelis, dual nationals or foreigners, were kidnapped on October 7 by Hamas, which has since released four women. The Islamist movement, which had threatened to execute hostages, estimates the number of them killed in the bombings to be “nearly 50”.
These strikes “are something that puts the hostages in danger,” said Mr. Rubinstein, spokesperson for the Forum of Families of Hostages and the Disappeared.
On Saturday, a senior Hamas official, Moussa Abou Marzouk, said in Moscow that his movement was trying to determine the location of eight hostages with dual Russian and Israeli nationality in order to free them.
Russia, unlike the United States, the European Union and Israel, does not consider Hamas a “terrorist” organization.
The bombings coincided with a communications and internet blackout in Gaza.
NGOs and UN agencies have reported losing contact with their teams in Gaza.
PHOTO HATEM ALI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A boy injured during Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip waits for treatment at a hospital in Rafah on October 28.
Humanitarian operations and hospital activity “cannot continue without communications,” said Lynn Hastings, a UN official.
the head of EU diplomacy called for “a pause in hostilities”
“Serve as a cover”
On October 9, Israel imposed a “total siege” on Gaza, cutting off water, electricity and food supplies, while the Palestinian territory had already been subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade for more than 16 years.
“Many more” people will “soon die” due to the siege, said the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini.
Israeli spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the army will allow “the entry of food, medicine and water for the population” of Gaza on Saturday.
Since October 21, 84 trucks of humanitarian aid have arrived via Egypt, according to the UN, when at least a hundred are needed per day.
“Stop this madness”
In New York, the UN General Assembly demanded by a large majority an “immediate humanitarian truce”, a resolution welcomed by Hamas, but rejected by Israel.
Israel wants to “annihilate” the Islamist movement, in retaliation for October 7. That day, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated from Gaza onto Israeli soil, where they carried out the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday accused the West of being “the main culprit of the massacres in Gaza”.
PHOTO ADEM ALTAN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
The international community fears a regional conflagration, while Iran, support of Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, has issued warnings to the United States, a close ally of Israel.
Tension is also very high in the West Bank occupied since 1967, where more than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers since October 7.
On Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, exchanges of fire are almost daily between the Israeli army and Hezbollah. The headquarters of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon was hit by a shell on Saturday, a spokesperson for the peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said.