UPDATED 2:16 P.M.
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel said on Tuesday its forces were operating deep in Gaza City in their battle to wipe out Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, and that the Islamist militant group’s leader was trapped inside a bunker.
Gaza residents said earlier that Israeli tanks were positioned on the outskirts of Gaza City, Hamas’ stronghold in the north of the territory and home to about a third of its 2.3 million people before the hostilities.
Israel previously said it had surrounded Gaza City and would soon attack it to annihilate Hamas fighters who assaulted Israeli towns across the border one month ago.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israeli soldiers were operating in the heart of Gaza City. Hamas’s most senior leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was isolated in his bunker, Gallant said in a televised news conference.
“IDF (Israeli military) forces…came from the north and the south. They stormed it in full coordination between land, air and sea forces,” Gallant said.
“They are manoeuvring on foot, armoured vehicles and tanks, along with military engineers from all directions and they have one target – Hamas terrorists in Gaza, their infrastructure, their commanders, bunkers, communications rooms. They are tightening the noose around Gaza City.”
He said that below the city there were kilometres (miles) of tunnels that ran under schools and hospitals and that housed weapons depots, communication rooms and hideouts for militants.
“Gaza City is encircled, we are operating inside it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised statement. “We are increasing pressure on Hamas every hour, every day. So far, we have killed thousands of terrorists, above ground and below ground.”
The Israeli military said Hamas militants fired anti-tank missiles at Israeli forces from nearby hospitals and that soldiers found weapons hidden in a school in northern Gaza.
The military wing of Hamas, which has ruled the small, densely populated enclave for 16 years, said its fighters were inflicting heavy losses and damage on advancing Israeli forces. It had no immediate comment on the possible fate of Sinwar.
It was not possible to verify the battlefield claims of either side.
The war – the bloodiest episode in the generations-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict – broke out on Oct. 7 when Hamas fighters burst across the fence enclosing Gaza and killed 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, and abducted more than 200, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel has bombarded the coastal territory relentlessly, killing more than 10,000 people, around 40 percent of them children, according to counts by health officials there.
MONTH OF CARNAGE
“It has been one full month of carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair,” U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Volcker Turk said in a statement at the start of a trip to the region.
Israel, which is trying to clear out Gaza City, gave residents a window from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to leave for the southern part of the 45-km (28-mile) long Gaza Strip.
Residents say Israeli tanks have been moving mostly at night with Israeli forces largely relying on air and artillery strikes to clear a path for their ground advance.
Gaza’s interior ministry says 900,000 Palestinians are still sheltering in northern Gaza including Gaza City.
“The most dangerous trip in my life. We saw the tanks from point blank (range). We saw decomposed body parts. We saw death,” resident Adam Fayez Zeyara posted with a selfie of himself on the road out of Gaza City.
Gallant repeated the calls for civilians to move south for their own safety. He also said that after the war was finished, neither Israel nor Hamas would rule Gaza.
While Israel’s military operation is focused on the northern half of Gaza, the south has also come under attack. Palestinian health officials said at least 23 people were killed in two separate Israeli air strikes early on Tuesday in the southern Gaza cities of Khan Younis and Rafah.
“We are civilians,” said Ahmed Ayesh, who was rescued from the rubble of a house in Khan Younis where health officials said 11 people had been killed. “This is the bravery of the so-called Israel – they show their might and power against civilians, babies inside, kids inside, and elderly.”
As he spoke, rescuers at the house used their hands to try to free a girl buried up to her waist in debris.
ISRAEL SEEKS ‘INDEFINITE PERIOD’ OF CONTROL
Both Israel and Hamas have rebuffed calls for a halt in fighting. Israel says hostages should be freed first. Hamas says it will not free them or stop fighting while Gaza is under attack. Washington has backed Israel’s position that a ceasefire would help Hamas militarily.
Israel has so far been vague about its long-term plans for Gaza, should it succeed in its operation to vanquish Hamas. In some of the first direct comments on the subject, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would seek to have security responsibility for Gaza “for an indefinite period”.
“We’ve seen what happens when we don’t have that security responsibility,” he told U.S. television’s ABC News.
Israel pulled its troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and two years later, Hamas took power there, driving out the Palestinian Authority which exercises limited self-rule in a separate, Israeli-occupied territory, the West Bank.
Simcha Rothman, a lawmaker in Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition, said in a social media post: “Our forces must not shed blood to give the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority wrapped in a bow… Only full Israeli control and a complete demilitarisation of the strip will restore security.”
But White House spokesman John Kirby said U.S. President Joe Biden opposed Israeli reoccupation: “It’s not good for Israel, it’s not good for the Israeli people,” Kirby told CNN.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spoken with leaders in the region about what governance of Gaza could look like after the war, Kirby said: “Whatever it is, it can’t be what it was on Oct. 6. It can’t be Hamas.”
Diplomatic discussions about how Gaza could be ruled after the war have considered the deployment of a multinational force, an interim Palestinian-led administration excluding Hamas, a stopgap security and governance role for neighbouring Arab states, and temporary U.N. supervision of the enclave, according to a source familiar with the matter.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Emily Rose, Henriette Chacar and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; writing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel gave civilians still trapped inside freshly encircled Gaza City a four hour window to leave on Tuesday, and residents escaping said they passed tanks in position to possibly begin storming it.
Israel says its forces have surrounded Gaza City, home to a third of the enclave’s 2.3 million people, and are poised to storm it soon in their campaign to annihilate the Hamas Islamists who attacked Israeli towns exactly a month ago.
War began on Oct. 7 when the fighters burst across the fence surrounding Gaza and killed 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, and abducted more than 200, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel has pounded Hamas-run Gaza with strikes, killing more than 10,000 people, around 40 percent of them children, according to tallies by health officials there.
“It has been one full month of carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair,” U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Volcker Turk said in a statement at the start of a trip to the region, during which he will visit the Rafah crossing from Egypt, the sole route for aid.
“Human rights violations are at the root of this escalation and human rights play a central role in finding a way out of this vortex of pain.”
Israel gave residents a window from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm to leave Gaza City on Tuesday. Residents say Israeli tanks have been moving mostly at night, with Israeli forces largely relying on air and artillery strikes to clear a path for their ground advance.
“For your safety, take this next opportunity to move south beyond Wadi Gaza,” the military announced, referring to the wetlands that bisect the strip.
“The most dangerous trip in my life. We saw the tanks from point blank. We saw decomposed body parts. We saw death,” resident Adam Fayez Zeyara posted with a selfie of himself on the road out of Gaza City.
While Israel’s military operation is focused on the northern half of Gaza, the south has also come under attack. Palestinian health officials said at least 23 people were killed in two separate Israeli air strikes early on Tuesday in the southern Gaza cities of Khan Younis and Rafah.
“We are civilians,” said Ahmed Ayesh, who was rescued from the rubble of a house in Khan Younis where health officials said 11 people had been killed. “This is the bravery of the so-called Israel, they show their might and power against civilians, babies inside, kids inside, and elderly.”
As he spoke, rescuers at the house used their hands to try to free a girl buried up to her waist in debris.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would consider “tactical little pauses” in Gaza fighting to let hostages leave or aid enter, but again rejected increasingly forceful calls for a ceasefire.
Israel’s military said it had captured a militant compound in the northern Gaza Strip and was set to attack fighters hiding in a warren of underground tunnels. It released footage showing troops using bulldozers to dig up earth and knock over walls.
Israeli aircraft struck several Hamas militants who had barricaded themselves in a building near the al-Quds Hospital inside Gaza City, the military said.
Both Israel and Hamas have rebuffed mounting calls for a halt in fighting. Israel says hostages should be released first. Hamas says it will not free them nor stop fighting while Gaza is under attack.
‘GRAVEYARD FOR CHILDREN’
Unrelenting horror stories of civilian suffering on both sides have polarized world opinion over the past month and show no sign of easing.
In Shefayim, Israel, Avihai Brodutch described 31 days of agony after Hamas abducted his wife and three children from Kfar Aza, a kibbutz about three km (2 miles) from Gaza.
“My kids, they’re so young, and they’ve done nothing wrong to anybody,” he said of his 10-year-old daughter Ofri and sons Yuval, eight, and Uriah, four.
Since last week, hundreds of Gazans who hold foreign passports have been permitted to exit through the Rafah crossing into Egypt. But the overwhelming majority of Gazans are trapped inside the strip, and those who have been able to escape describe their torment at leaving loved-ones behind.
“It’s just a horror movie that keeps putting on repeat,” Suzan Beseiso, a 31-year-old Palestinian-American who managed to leave Gaza for Egypt last week, told Reuters in Cairo. “No sleep. No food. No water. You keep evacuating from one place to another.”
Her own escape was fraught with danger from Israeli bombardment on the route out, she said.
Netanyahu said a general ceasefire would hamper his country’s war effort, but pauses to fighting for humanitarian reasons could continue to be considered based on circumstances.
U.S. President Joe Biden discussed such pauses with Netanyahu by phone on Monday, reiterating his support for Israel while emphasizing it must protect civilians, the White House said.
Washington backs Israel’s assertion that Hamas would take advantage of a full ceasefire to regroup. But many countries and agencies say a ceasefire is needed at once to help Gazans in peril.
The enclave is becoming a “graveyard for children”, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Monday. International organizations have said hospitals cannot cope with the wounded and food and clean water are running out with aid deliveries nowhere near enough.
“We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” said a statement from the heads of several United Nations’ bodies on Monday.
The Israeli military on Monday released video of tanks moving through bombed-out streets and groups of troops moving on foot. Chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said troops were hunting Hamas field level commanders to weaken the militants’ ability “to carry out counter attacks.”
There are fears that the month-old conflict could spread to other fronts, including the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the northern border with Lebanon, both areas that have seen a surge in unrest to the deadliest in many years.
In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday a total 163 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces since Oct. 7 and the number killed since the start of this year reached 371.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Emily Rose in Gaza, Patricia Zengerle in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Amina Ismail in Cairo; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis, Lincoln Feast and William Maclean; Editing by Rami Ayyub, Cynthia Osterman, Simon Cameron-Moore, Peter Graff)
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