Israel pressed its war to crush Hamas on Sunday nearly a month after the deadliest attack in the country’s history as the Palestinian militant group said strikes on a central Gaza refugee camp killed dozens.
Ground battles raged in the north of the densely populated Gaza Strip, despite calls for a ceasefire from Arab countries and from desperate civilians after 30 days of a war that has killed thousands, mostly civilians.
Israeli troops were seen engaged in house-to-house battles as tanks and armoured bulldozers churned through the sand in footage released by the army on the campaign to tighten the encirclement of Gaza City, still home to hundreds of thousands of civilians.
In a video taken from Israel’s Sderot along the border with the Gaza Strip, an Israeli flag was seen raised on top of a destroyed building.
The health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas, says more than 9,480 Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed.
As the war ground into its fifth week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on a Middle East tour Sunday and headed to Turkey, voicing support for its ally Israel while also urging “humanitarian pauses” and seeking to prevent a wider regional conflagration.
Since Israel sent ground forces into the north of the narrow Palestinian territory late last month, “over 2,500 terror targets have been struck” by “ground, air and naval forces”, the army said on Sunday.
Soldiers were engaged in “close-quarters combat”, it said, as Israeli jets were striking targets including a “Hamas military compound” overnight in the north of Gaza, vast areas of which have been reduced to a wasteland of rubble.
Leaflets dropped by the army again urged Gaza City residents to evacuate south between 10 am (0800 GMT) and 2 pm (1200 GMT), a day after a US official said at least 350,000 civilians remained in and around the city that is now an urban war zone.
In the latest strikes in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry said, Israeli bombing of Al-Maghazi refugee camp late Saturday killed 45 people, with an eyewitness reporting children dead and homes smashed.
With AFP
