Israel sharply stepped up strikes on the Gaza Strip, pounding the length of the Palestinian enclave and killing hundreds in a new, expanded phase of the war that Washington said veered from Israeli promises to do more to protect civilians.
The Israeli military said on Friday it had struck more than 450 targets in Gaza from land, sea and air over the past 24 hours - the most since a truce collapsed last week and about double the daily figures typically reported since then.
With most Gazans now displaced and unable to access any aid, hospitals overrun and food running out, the main UN agency there said society was “on the verge of a full-blown collapse” and its ability to protect people there was “reducing fast”.
Residents and the Israeli military both reported intensified fighting in both northern areas, where Israel had previously said its troops had largely completed their tasks last month, and in the south where they mounted a new assault this week.
Gaza’s health ministry reported 350 people killed on Thursday, bringing the death toll from Israel’s two-month campaign in Gaza to 17,487, with thousands more missing and presumed buried under rubble. More strikes were reported on Friday morning in Khan Younis in the south, the Nusseirat camp in the centre and Gaza City in the north.
An Israeli commander, Brig Gen Dan Goldfuss, said in a video message recorded in Khan Younis that his forces were fighting house to house and “shaft to shaft”, a reference to tunnel shafts. As he spoke, gunshots rang out in the background.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Washington on Thursday that it was imperative that Israel took steps to protect Gaza’s civilian population.
“And there does remain a gap between...the intent to protect civilians and the actual results that we’re seeing on the ground,” he told a press conference.
With the fighting now extended across both halves of the Gaza Strip at the same time, residents say it has become almost impossible to find refuge.
Israel says it is providing detail about which areas are safe and how to reach them, and blames Hamas for harm that befalls civilians by operating among them, which Hamas denies.
Hamas reported the most intense clashes with Israeli forces were taking place in the north in Gaza City’s Shejaia district, as well as in the south in Khan Younis, where Israelis reached the heart of the enclave’s second-biggest city on Wednesday.
The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman posted to social media that troops were operating “forcefully against Hamas and terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, especially in the Khan Younis area and the northern Strip”.
He said all residents must leave the Jabaliya and Zeitoun areas in the north, as well as Shejaia and the old city in Gaza City. In the south, residents seeking shelter should head along the coast, with the main north-south route through the spine of the enclave now “a battlefield”, he said.
