At least 2,269 Palestinians have been killed and 9,814 others wounded in the blockaded enclave of Gaza in a brutal air campaign of reprisal attacks by Israel as infantry forces from the IDF made their first raids into the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed troops backed by tanks had mounted raids to attack Palestinian rocket crews and seek information on the location of hostages, the first official account of ground troops in Gaza since the crisis began.
The death toll included 2,215 dead from Gaza with 8,714 injured. The other 54 dead and 1,100 wounded were from the West Bank, the report added.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians fled the north of the Gaza Strip on Saturday from the path of an expected Israeli ground assault, while Israel pounded the area with more air strikes and said it would keep two roads open to let people escape.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a campaign of retaliation had ‘only just begun’. Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas after its fighters burst out of Gaza a week ago and carried out operation in southern Israel.
Since then Israel has placed the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, under a total siege and bombarded it with unprecedented air strikes.
“We have seen a significant movement of Palestinian civilians towards the south,” Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told a video briefing early on Saturday.
“Around the Gaza Strip, Israeli reserve soldiers in formation (are) getting ready for the next stage of operations,” he added.
“They are all around the Gaza Strip, in the south, in the centre and in the north, and they are preparing themselves for whatever target they get, whatever task.
Several thousand Gaza residents took to roads heading out of the northern part of the Gaza Strip, but it was impossible to assess their numbers. Gaza authorities said 70 people were killed and 200 were wounded when Israel struck cars and trucks carrying people fleeing the north of the strip for the south.
Many others said they would not leave.
“Death is better than leaving,” said Mohammad, 20, standing in the street outside a building reduced to rubble in an earlier Israeli air strike near the centre of Gaza. Mosques broadcast the message: “Hold on to your homes. Hold on to your land”.
“We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places,” Eyad Al-Bozom, spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, told a news conference.
US President Joe Biden said consultations were under way with regional governments on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as trapped Palestinians endured a power blackout and shortages of food and water amid fierce Israeli bombing.
The situation in Gaza has reached a “a dangerous new low”, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Friday. “We need immediate humanitarian access throughout Gaza, so that we can get fuel, food and water to everyone in need. Even wars have rules.”
A Hamas militant who Israel said led a unit of commando forces that gunned down civilians in last week’s attack on southern Israel has been killed in an air strike, the military said Saturday.
Israeli military “aircraft killed Ali Qadi, a company commander of the Hamas ‘Nukhba’ (elite) commando force,” a statement said without specifying the location or timing of the strike.
A Hamas official told AFP the Palestinian group had “no comment” concerning the Israeli claim.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Qadi, 37, was a unit commander in the elite Hamas force. Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with their possessions crowded a main road heading southward from Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes continued to hammer the besieged territory.
Hamas’ media office said warplanes struck cars fleeing south, killing more than 70 people.
The Israeli military said its troops conducted temporary raids into Gaza to battle militants and hunted for traces of some 150 people — including men, women and children — abducted in Hamas’s shocking Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel.—Agencies
