Israeli troops and warplanes attack northern Gaza – Naharnet

The Israeli military said on Friday it was carrying out air-backed attacks in northern Gaza, killing “dozens” of militants in an area where it had declared Hamas’ command structure dissolved months ago.

The operation in Shujaiya on the outskirts of Gaza City claimed numerous victims, witnesses and medics said at the start on Thursday.

The renewed fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip followed comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, who said the “intense phase” of the war was coming to an end after nearly nine months.

Experts believe the next phase may take longer.

Omer Dostri, a military expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, believes the army will reduce its ground presence and increase the use of drones and fighter jets “to further destroy Hamas.”

On Friday, an AFP correspondent in the Shujaiya area witnessed an airstrike and saw smoke rising and the roar of artillery fire.

In a statement, the Israeli military said troops began “targeted attacks” in the Shujaiya area on Thursday night, part of an operation that began earlier in the day.

Intelligence information had indicated “the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the Shujaiya area,” the military said in its first details of the operation.

– “Significant strikes” –

As troops moved in, warplanes attacked dozens of Hamas targets, it said, after “significant” attacks in the north that killed “dozens” of militants.

On Thursday, a military spokesman called on Gaza residents and displaced people in a social media message to leave the area “for their safety.”

They were ordered to go south to a designated “humanitarian zone” about 25 kilometers away.

An AFP photographer saw many Palestinians walking and carrying their belongings through rubble-strewn streets.

Hamas said Israeli forces were “launching a ground offensive” and reported “several” deaths while “thousands are fleeing the relentless bombardment.”

The war began with Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP news agency count based on Israeli figures.

The militants also took prisoners, 116 of whom are still in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli army says 42 people have died.

According to the Health Ministry, at least 37,765 people, again mostly civilians, were killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

On Friday, the military announced the death of another soldier, aged 19, in fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll since the start of ground operations in the area to 314.

Elsewhere in the coastal strip, medics reported three deaths in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Friday.

AFP images showed that the town hall had been destroyed.

As other AFP images show, colleagues prayed over the bodies of four volunteer civil defence officers killed in a bombing of the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp.

Orange work vests lay on their white-clad bodies.

Witnesses reported artillery fire in Nuseirat on Friday.

In the Gaza Strip, most of the population has been displaced and much of the area’s infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving residents struggling to survive.

According to a United Nations-backed assessment this week, nearly half a million people in the Gaza Strip are still suffering from “catastrophic” hunger.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification website states that it was “created precisely for the purpose of avoiding potential political interference through technical neutrality” and that its parameters are based on international standards.

A spokesman for the Israeli government rejected the report, saying, among other things, that it was based on “data from Hamas’ own health facilities.”

UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to restore electricity to a desalination plant in southern Gaza, a “major milestone” that could provide much-needed water to one million displaced people, it said.

In another hopeful development, 21 cancer patients left Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing to receive treatment in the United Arab Emirates, a medical source in Egypt said.

Netanyahu’s announcement that the fierce fighting is easing comes at a time when his right-wing coalition is facing a number of pressures.

An AFP reporter reported that thousands of protesters again gathered outside his residence in Jerusalem on Thursday to demand an agreement to release the hostages.

In the greater Tel Aviv area, mounted police dispersed protests by ultra-Orthodox men against the Supreme Court ruling that they should be drafted into military service.