Israel’s military has said its forces have divided Gaza into two as it reaches a “significant stage” in its war against Hamas.
“Today there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Sunday night after troops reached the coastline.
He added that troops have surrounded Gaza City.The troops will enter Gaza City in the coming 48 hours, Israeli media reported.
Israel is still “allowing a corridor” for the residents of the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City to go south.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Monday its ground forces “took control of a Hamas outpost in Gaza” on Sunday night and its jets had attacked 450 targets in the past day.
Amid the heavy bombardment Gaza came under the third total communications outage since the start of the war, according to reports.
But the “collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by Palestinian telecom company Paltel made it even more complicated to convey details of the new stage of the military offensive.
“We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team members,” UN Palestinian refugee agency spokesperson Juliette Touma told The Associated Press.
The first Gaza outage lasted 36 hours and the second one for a few hours.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken arrived in Turkey on Sunday night as he continues his diplomatic tour of the region and pushes for a pause in the fighting.
America’s most senior diplomat met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, a day after meeting Arab foreign ministers.
Mr Blinken said regional leaders would “welcome” a humanitarian pause in Gaza. But Israel says it needs progress on the release of hostages before agreeing to any pause in its offensive
Abbas, who has had no authority in Gaza since Hamas took over in 2007, said the Palestinian Authority would only assume control of Gaza as part of a “comprehensive political solution” establishing an independent state
Earlier Sunday, Israeli warplanes struck two central Gaza refugee camps, killing at least 53 people and wounding dozens, health officials said.
Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush Hamas, despite US appeals for even brief pauses to get aid to desperate civilians.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, more than 4,000 of them children and minors.
That toll likely will rise as Israeli troops advance into dense, urban neighbourhoods.
Airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp overnight on Sunday, killing at least 40 people and wounding 34 others, the Health Ministry said. The camp is in the zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians to seek refuge. An AP reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, brought in after the strike. A surviving child was led down the corridor, her clothes caked in dust.
Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multi-story homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.
“It was a true massacre,” he said. “All here are peaceful people. I challenge anyone who says there were resistance (fighters) here.”
Another airstrike hit a house near a school at the Bureji refugee camp in central Gaza. Staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital told the AP at least 13 people were killed. The camp was struck on Thursday as well.
Despite appeals and overseas demonstrations, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas and accusing it of using civilians as human shields. Critics say Israel’s strikes are often disproportionate, considering the large number of civilians killed.
On the ground, Israeli forces in Gaza have reported finding stashes of weapons, at times including explosives, suicide drones and missiles.
