Israeli tanks and infantry have targeted tunnel entrances and rocket launch positions in fresh clashes with Hamas around Gaza City and in the south of the enclave.
The fighting on Tuesday came amid renewed hope that significant quantities of aid would reach beleaguered Palestinian civilians in the south via the Rafah crossing with Egypt. A World Health Organization official in Geneva said on Tuesday that a “public health catastrophe” was imminent in Gaza.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said they struck about 300 targets since Monday, hitting Hamas military compounds and killing “numerous” militants, including Nisam Abu Ajina, the commander of Hamas’s Beit Lahiya battalion.
Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesperson, said ground operations were focused on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, which he called the “centre of gravity of Hamas”.
He added: “But we also continue to strike in other parts of Gaza. We are hunting their commanders, we are attacking their infrastructure, and whenever there is an important target that is related to Hamas, we strike it.”
Hamas said its forces targeted Israeli trucks, tanks and bulldozers with machine-guns and al-Yassin 105 missiles, a locally produced anti-tank weapon.
Neither side gave details of casualties or territory won or lost, keeping a veil over a ground offensive that began on Friday when Israeli troops and armour entered the enclave in force.
The fighting came amid a promise from Israel to increase the aid flow to 2.3 million Palestinian civilians who are in ruined towns and cities and lack water, food, medicine and electricity.
“You’re going to see a big increase in humanitarian assistance in the next two or three days,” the strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, told a media briefing on Monday night.
The Times of Israel quoted a US official saying Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had agreed to allow 100 trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza each day, which would be a dramatic increase from the current thin trickle.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, told a UN emergency meeting on Monday that the handful of convoys Israel allowed to enter via Rafah was nothing compared with the needs of over 2 million people trapped in Gaza.
The agency has said nearly 672,000 Palestinians are sheltering in its schools and other facilities — four times their capacity. Thousands of people broke into its aid warehouses over the weekend to take food, it said.
More than 8,525 people have died, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and 800,0000 have been displaced by three weeks of Israeli bombardments. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had dealt with 2,580 deaths and 7,667 injuries.
Unicef’s executive director, Catherine Russell, said the Palestinian death toll included more than 3,400 children killed and more than 6,300 injured. “This means that more than 420 children are being killed or injured in Gaza each day – a number which should shake each of us to our core,” she said.
The conflict began after a Hamas onslaught in southern Israel on 7 October left more than 1,400 people dead and more than 220 abducted as hostages.
Some Israelis oppose any aid for Gaza. However, Israel’s security chiefs now support expanding humanitarian aid because they wish to keep international support for a military offensive that they expect to last a month, the commentator Nadav Eyal wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
“In order to allow the IDF to operate over time, some form of regular life will have to be created in the southern Gaza Strip near Rafah,” he said. “Legitimacy equals time, that is the formula that the Israeli security establishment has come to adopt.”
Israelis continued on Tuesday to celebrate the rescue of Ori Megidish, an army private who had been held hostage and was extracted in a special forces operation on Sunday night.
“A moment of light in the darkness of the difficult war,” said the newspaper Israel Hayom. Megidish’s return to her family had partially restored Israelis’ confidence in their armed forces, it said. “The feeling is that for the first time since October 7, the Israeli side has regained its daringness and creativity.”
