Israeli forces backed by fighter jets and drones carried out a second ground raid into Gaza in as many days and struck targets on the outskirts of Gaza City, the military said yesterday, as it prepares for a widely expected ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled territory.
Meanwhile, US warplanes struck targets in eastern Syria that the Pentagon said were linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard after a string of attacks on US forces, and two mysterious objects hit towns in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, adding to the already high tensions fueled by the three-week-old Gaza war.
The Palestinian death toll has soared past 7,000, as Israel has carried out waves of devastating airstrikes in response to a bloody Hamas incursion into southern Israel on Oct. 7. The Health Ministry in Gaza, which tracks the toll, on Thursday released a detailed list of names and identification numbers. The toll includes more than 2,900 minors and more than 1,500 women.
Photo: AP
More than 1,400 people in Israel, mostly civilians, were slain during the initial Hamas attack, the Israeli government has said. Hamas is holding at least 229 captives inside Gaza, including men, women, children and older adults.
The Israeli military said ground forces raided inside Gaza, striking dozens of militant targets over the past 24 hours. It said aircraft and artillery bombed targets in Shijaiyah, a neighborhood on Gaza City’s outskirts that was the scene of an urban battle in the 2014 Gaza war. It said the soldiers exited the territory without suffering any casualties.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the raids enable forces to “uncover the enemy,” to kill militants and to remove explosives and launch pads.
The aim is “to prepare the ground for the next stages of the war,” he added.
Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel since the war began.
Hamas’ military wing on Thursday said that Israeli bombardment has so far killed about 50 of the hostages. There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials, who have denied previous, similar claims.
The conflict has threatened to ignite a wider war across the region.
Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed ally of Hamas in Lebanon, has repeatedly traded fire with Israel along the border, and Israel has carried out airstrikes targeting Iran-linked groups in Syria.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the strikes in eastern Syria were “a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on Oct. 17.”
He said the operation was separate from the Israel-Hamas war.
Iran-backed fighters later fired rockets at an oil facility housing US troops in eastern Syria, Syrian opposition activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the US strikes had wounded seven Iran-backed Iraqi fighters.
Egypt’s military said a drone crashed into a building in the Red Sea town of Taba, on the border with Israel, slightly wounding six people.
State media had initially said it was a rocket.
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