Israel signals it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza as the war enters its fourth month

JERUSALEM – The Israeli army signaled that it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza, announcing it has finished dismantling Hamas’ army infrastructure there, as the war towards the militant workforce entered its fourth month Sunday.

Its spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, stated overdue Saturday that forces would “continue to deepen the achievement” there, enhance defenses alongside the Israel-Gaza border fence and concentrate on the central and southern portions of the territory.

The announcement got here forward of a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Biden management officers, together with Blinken, have again and again recommended Israel to wind down its blistering air and flooring offensive in Gaza and shift to extra focused assaults towards Hamas leaders to stop hurt to Palestinian civilians.

In fresh weeks, Israel had already been scaling again its military assault in northern Gaza and urgent its offensive in the territory’s south, the place maximum of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians are being squeezed into smaller areas in a humanitarian disaster whilst being pounded through Israeli airstrikes.

The war used to be induced through Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 other folks, most commonly civilians, and took some 250 other folks hostage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the war won’t finish till the goals of getting rid of Hamas, getting Israel’s hostages returned and making sure that Gaza received’t be a danger to Israel are met.

Israel’s retaliation through air, land and sea has killed greater than 22,700 Palestinians and wounded greater than 58,000, in step with the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The rely of the useless does now not distinguish between fighters and civilians. Health officers say about two-thirds of the ones killed were girls and minors. Israel blames Hamas for the heavy civilian casualties as a result of the workforce operates in closely populated residential spaces.

On Sunday, officers at Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis gained the our bodies of 18 other folks, together with 12 youngsters, who have been killed in an Israeli strike overdue Saturday. More than 50 other folks have been injured in the strike on a house in the Khan Younis refugee camp, which used to be set up a long time in the past to accommodate refugees from the 1948 Mideast war over Israel’s introduction and morphed into a local of the town.

Another airstrike hit a area between Khan Younis and the southern town of Rafah, killing no less than seven other folks whose our bodies have been taken to the close by European Hospital, in step with an Associated Press journalist at the facility.

Israeli forces have been additionally pushing deeper into the central town of Deir al-Balah, the place on Saturday citizens in a number of neighborhoods have been warned in flyers dropped over the town that they will have to evacuate their properties.

The world scientific charity Doctors Without Borders, identified through the acronym MSF, stated it used to be evacuating its scientific group of workers and their households from Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital as a result of the rising risk.

“The situation became so dangerous that some staff living in the neighboring areas were not able to leave their houses because of the constant threats of drones and snipers,” stated Carolina Lopez, the workforce’s emergency coordinator at the sanatorium.

She stated a bullet penetrated a wall of the sanatorium’s in depth care unit on Friday, and that “drone attacks and sniper fire were just a few hundred meters from the hospital” over the previous couple of days.

The workforce had about 50 Palestinian and world scientific group of workers in the sanatorium. Lopez stated the sanatorium has gained between 150 and 200 injured other folks day by day in fresh weeks. “On some days, we have received more dead than injured,” she stated. “No one and nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

Hagari, the army spokesman, stated Israeli forces would act in a different way in the south than that they had in northern Gaza, the place heavy bombardment and flooring combat leveled entire neighborhoods.

He stated the city refugee camps these days being focused through the army are full of gunmen and that “an underground city of sprawling tunnels” used to be found out beneath Khan Younis. He stated the army is “applying the lessons we learned,” however didn’t elaborate. Echoing Israeli political leaders, he stated the combating “will continue throughout 2024.”

His feedback about converting the manner the forces are combating seemed to be a nod to Blinken, who’s on his fourth Mideast travel in 3 months.

In addition to appeals for scaling again high-intensity combat, Blinken has referred to as for extra support to achieve Gaza and recommended Israel’s leaders to return up with a imaginative and prescient for post-war Gaza.

Two U.S. senators who inspected support deliveries over the weekend described a cumbersome process this is slowing reduction to the Palestinian inhabitants in the besieged territory — in large part because of Israeli inspections of shipment vans, with apparently arbitrary rejections of important humanitarian apparatus. The machine to make sure that support deliveries inside of Gaza don’t get hit through Israeli forces is “totally broken,” stated Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley, each Democrats.

Meanwhile, the Biden management and Netanyahu stay some distance aside on who must run the territory after the war, with the Israeli chief again and again rejecting the Washington-floated concept of getting a reformed Palestinian Authority, an autonomy executive in portions of the occupied West Bank, sooner or later administer Gaza.

In an extra complication of Blinken’s undertaking, a brand new escalation of cross-border fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah has put traces on a U.S. push to stop a regional conflagration. Saturday’s combating used to be described through Hezbollah as an “initial response” to the focused killing of a best Hamas chief in a Hezbollah stronghold of the Lebanese capital of Beirut ultimate week. The strike used to be presumed to were performed through Israel.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo and Jobain from Rafah, Gaza Strip.

___ Find extra of AP’s protection at: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war