Israeli forces severed northern Gaza from the rest of the besieged territory and pounded it with intense airstrikes overnight into yesterday, setting the stage for an expected push into the dense confines of Gaza City and an even bloodier phase of the month-long war.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said that 10,022 Palestinians had been killed, including more than 4,100 children and 2,600 women. The ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. About 1,400 Israelis have died, mostly civilians killed in the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war.
Casualties are only likely to rise as the war turns to close urban combat. Troops are expected to enter Gaza City soon, Israeli media reported, and Palestinian militants who have had years to prepare are likely to fight street by street, launching ambushes from a vast network of tunnels.
Photo: AP
The Israeli military said late on Sunday that it had cut off northern Gaza from the south, calling it a “significant stage” in the war. Yesterday, it said that aircraft struck 450 targets overnight and ground troops took over a Hamas compound.
A one-way corridor for residents to flee south remains available for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain in Gaza City and other parts of the north, it said.
Israel has so far rejected US suggestions for a pause in fighting to facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries and the release of some of the estimated 240 hostages seized by Hamas in its raid.
Israel has also dismissed calls for a broader ceasefire from increasingly alarmed Arab countries, including Jordan and Egypt.
After days of intense diplomacy around the Middle East, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday wrapped up his tour of the region, saying efforts to secure a humanitarian pause, negotiate the release of hostages and plan for a post-Hamas Gaza were still “a work in progress,” without pointing to any concrete achievements.
The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border.
In another sign of growing unrest, a Palestinian man stabbed and wounded two members of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police in east Jerusalem before being shot dead, police and an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.
In northern Gaza, a Jordanian military cargo plane air-dropped medical aid to a field hospital, Jordan’s King Abdullah II said early yesterday.
It appeared to be the first such airdrop of the war, raising the possibility of another avenue for aid delivery besides Egypt’s Rafah crossing, which has so far been the only entry point.
Palestinians yesterday held a mass funeral for 66 people outside a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. The bodies were wrapped in white sheets on the ground outside the hospital morgue. A man with bandages wrapped around his head placed his hand on a child’s body and wept.
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