Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into Gaza in a brief raid on Wednesday night to “prepare the battlefield” for a ground invasion as calls grew for far more desperately-needed aid to be allowed into the besieged strip.
The Israel Defence Forces said “numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts” were targeted.
With 360,000 reservists called up, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was “preparing for a ground invasion”.
“I will not elaborate on when, how or how many,” he added, but large numbers of troops and tanks are already massed on the border with Gaza.
As the clock was ticking towards a major Israeli ground incursion, Whitehall’s Cobra emergency committee met on Thursday morning in London on how to evacuate Britons trapped in Gaza.
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said the crisis talks also covered efforts to get a small number of British hostages seized by terror group Hamas freed, as well as to increase the flow of aid into the strip.
Israel has pounded the 25-mile long, six-mile wide enclave with relentless waves of air strikes after the October 7 Islamic State-style slaughter of more than 1,400 people by Hamas in the south of the country, with 224 seized hostages still being held in Gaza, according to military sources.
Health chiefs in Gaza say more than 6,500 people have been killed, including 750 in a 24-hour-period which would be the highest daily death toll.
The figures have not been confirmed independently, and are dismissed by America, but the large-scale death and destruction in Gaza is clear from footage, reports and photographs.
Israel said on Thursday morning it had carried out some 250 airstrikes across Gaza in the last 24 hours, targeting tunnel shafts, rocket launchers and other militant infrastructure.
An airstrike on the southern town of Khan Younis hit a residential building where 75 people were staying, according to family members, including 25 who had fled other parts of Gaza. Ambulances streamed into the nearby Nasser Hospital.
Rishi Sunak stressed the need for “pauses”, rather than a ceasefire, in the conflict so more aid could be brought in and foreign nationals evacuated.
Ahead of chairing the Cobra meeting, Mr Dowden said British citizens would be helped to get out of Gaza “as soon as it is safe to do so”. Mr Sunak also firmly blamed Hamas “alone” for its “appalling act of terrorism”.
His comments came after United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres sparked a furious backlash from Israel for saying the slaughter on October 7 “did not happen in a vacuum”, while also stressing that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas”.
The UN was warning on Thursday that it is on the verge of running out of fuel in Gaza, forcing it to sharply curtail relief efforts in the territory where 2.3 million people live, with more than half believed to have been forced to leave their homes.
The Israeli military insists that it only strikes militant targets and accuses Hamas of operating among civilians in densely-populated Gaza. Palestinian militants have fired rocket barrages into Israel since the conflict began.
But the rising death tolls in Gaza are unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with fatalities including in the south of the strip, where Israel advised people to flee to in order to avoid bombardment in the north. Even greater loss of life is feared if Israel launches a ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and survived four previous wars with Israel.
Concerns are also rife that an invasion could trigger a wider Middle East war, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon attacking Israel from the north.
In recent days, Israel has let more than 60 trucks with aid enter Gaza from Egypt. But aid workers say this is only a fraction of what is needed.
Israel is still barring deliveries of fuel, needed to power generators, saying it believes Hamas will take it.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees said it was sharing its fuel with hospitals but it had been forced to scale it back for bakeries, hitting bread supplies.
More than half of Gaza’s health care facilities and a third of its hospitals have stopped functioning, the World Health Organisation said.
At Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, the lack of medicine and clean water has led to “alarming” infection rates, say doctors, with one consultant amputating half the foot of a nine-year-old boy with only “slight sedation”.
At the United Nations, Russia and China vetoed a US-drafted Security Council resolution calling for pauses in hostilities to allow food, water and medicine to be delivered to Palestinian civilians. The United Arab Emirates also voted no, while 10 members voted in favour.
Russia made a rival proposal urging a wider ceasefire, but failed to win the minimum number of votes.
Israel has resisted both, arguing Hamas would only take advantage and create new threats to Gaza civilians.
