Gaza: Israeli tanks have begun positioning themselves on the border fence with Gaza as the military build-up continues amid relentless bombardment of the besieged Palestinian enclave, media reports said.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced after Israel ordered 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate to the south amid a looming ground offensive.
At least 2,329 Palestinians, including 724 children, have been killed in Israeli air raids. The number of Israelis killed in Hamas’s military operation stands at 1,300 including 286 soldiers.
The Israeli military says it is striking targets in Lebanon after a missile attack by Hezbollah fighters killed a person in its territory. It comes as Iran warned Israel to cease its “war crimes” against Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.
Daniel Hagari, Israel’s army top spokesperson, says the military will operate “anywhere in the Middle East”.
“We are always looking around us, in the entire Middle East,” Hagari was quoted as saying by Israeli media.
“[The army] will operate anywhere in the Middle East to fulfill Israel’s security aims. We are highly prepared in all arenas,” he added, Al Jazeera reported.
Meanwhile, a week of blistering airstrikes has demolished entire neighbourhoods but failed to stem militant rocket fire into Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 2,329 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted, more than in the 2014 Gaza war, which lasted over six weeks. That makes this the deadliest of the five Gaza wars for both sides.
More than 1,300 Israelis have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians killed in Hamas’s October 7 assault. This is the deadliest war for Israel since the 1973 conflict with Egypt and Syria.
Israel dropped leaflets over Gaza City in the north and renewed warnings on social media, ordering more than 1 million Palestinians — almost half the territory’s population — to move south. The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a major campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said were underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.
The military said Sunday that it would refrain from targeting a single route south from 10am to 1pm, again urging Palestinians to leave the north en masse. The military offered two corridors and a longer window the day before. It says hundreds of thousands have already fled south.
Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon meanwhile fired an anti-tank missile toward an Israeli army post and Israel responded with artillery fire. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said a 40-year-old man was killed, without giving his nationality. Israel later closed off areas up to 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the border and ordered civilians within 2 kilometers to shelter in safe rooms.
Israel and Hezbollah, which fought a devastating war in 2006, have traded fire along the border several times since the start of the latest Gaza war.
The UN and aid groups have said that the mass exodus within Gaza, along with Israel’s complete siege of the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile-long) coastal territory, would cause untold human suffering.
The World Health Organization said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care.
Gaza’s hospitals are expected to run out of generator fuel within two days, according to the UN, which said that that would endanger the lives of thousands of patients.
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the US was moving a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean, in a show of force meant to deter any allies of Hamas, such as Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, from seeking to widen the war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meanwhile met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh as the Biden administration scrambles to prevent a wider regional conflict. Prince Mohammed is the sixth Arab leader Blinken has met since he arrived in the Middle East Thursday.
Hamas remained defiant. In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a top official based abroad, said that “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.
Hamas spokesperson Jihad Taha told The Associated Press in Beirut that Israel “does not dare to fight a ground battle,” because of the captives. He alluded to the possible entry of Hezbollah and other regional players in the battle should Israel launch a ground invasion but declined to say whether they had made any concrete commitments.
An Israeli airstrike near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80, Gaza health authorities said.
Most of the victims were women and children, the authorities said. Doctors from Kamal Edwan Hospital shared footage of charred and disfigured bodies.
It was not clear how many Palestinians remained in northern Gaza by Saturday afternoon, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. An estimated 1 million people have been displaced in Gaza in one week, she said.
At Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, a crowd of men, women and children that medical officials estimated at 35,000 crammed into the hospital’s lobby and bloodied hallways and under the trees on the hospital grounds, hoping the facility would be spared in the coming attack.
“People think this is the only safe space after their homes were destroyed and they were forced to flee,” said Dr. Medhat Abbas, a Health Ministry official.
Basic necessities, including water, were running out because of the siege, which Israel has said will only be lifted when the captives are returned.
The Israeli military’s evacuation order demands the territory’s entire population cram into the southern half of Gaza as Israel continues strikes, including in the south. The Hamas communications office said Israel has destroyed over 7,000 housing units so far.
Agencies