Israeli forces cut off north Gaza to isolate Hamas

KHAN YOUNIS (AP):

The Israeli army severed northern Gaza from the rest of the besieged territory and pounded it with airstrikes on Monday, preparing for an expected push by ground forces into the dense confines of Gaza City and an even bloodier phase of the month-old war.

Already, the Palestinian death toll passed 10,000 people, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday. The ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. Some 1,400 Israelis have died, mostly civilians killed in the October 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war.

The war has quickly become the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence since Israel’s establishment 75 years ago, with no end in sight as Israel vows to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.

Casualties are likely to rise sharply as the war turns to close urban combat. Troops are expected to enter Gaza City soon, Israeli media reported, and Palestinian militants who have had years to prepare are likely to fight street by street, launching ambushes from a vast network of tunnels.

“We’re closing in on them,” said Lt Col Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman. “We’ve completed our encirclement, separating Hamas strongholds in the north from the south.” The military said it struck 450 targets overnight and ground troops took over a Hamas compound.

Several hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path. The military says a one-way corridor for residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas to flee south remains available. But many are afraid to use the route, part of which is held by Israeli troops.

In recent days, airstrikes have hit UN facilities where thousands are sheltering, as well as hospitals, which have been overwhelmed by the wounded and running low on power and supplies.

A strike early Monday hit the roof of Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, killing a number of displaced people sheltering on its top floor and destroying solar panels, said Mohamed Zaqout, general manager of all hospitals in Gaza. The panels have been helping keep power on in the facility, which has been reduced to using one generator because of lack of fuel.

Heavy Israeli bombardment overnight hit the Shati refugee camp, a densely built-up district on the Mediterranean coast adjacent to central Gaza City, Palestinians who fled south on Monday reported. They said houses in the district were reduced to rubble with unknown numbers of people trapped underneath.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a surgeon at Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press the hospital buildings shook all night from the bombardment “and we started getting the bodies and the wounded. It was horrendous”.

Around 70 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have fled their homes since the war began. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and UN-run schools-turned-shelters are beyond capacity. Many people are sleeping on the streets outside.

Mobile phone and Internet service went down overnight, the third territory-wide outage since the start of the war, but was gradually restored on Monday.

Some 800,000 people have heeded Israeli military orders to flee to southern Gaza. But Israeli bombardments continue across the territory, and strikes in central and southern Gaza – the purported safe zone – killed dozens of people on Sunday. Israel blames civilian casualties on Hamas, accusing the militants of operating in residential neighbourhoods.