“We have entered a new phase in the war. Last night the ground in Gaza shook. Yoav Gallant
Hamas demands Israel free all Palestinian prisoners in exchange for hostages
GAZA + TELL AVIV ( Web News )
Battles were raging in Gaza early on Saturday, as Israel expanded its ground operations and cut communications to the Palestinian territory, three weeks after the deadliest attack in the country’s history.
The United Nations warned of a looming “unprecedented avalanche of human suffering” inside the Gaza Strip, following weeks of relentless bombing by Israel, while the General Assembly pushed for an “immediate humanitarian truce”.
“We are confronting an Israeli ground incursion in Beit Hanoun (in the northern Gaza Strip) and east Bureij (in the centre) and violent engagements are taking place on the ground,” Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.
Israeli military spokesman Major Nir Dinar told AFP: “Our troops are operating inside Gaza as they did yesterday.”
With tens of thousands of troops massed along the Gaza border ahead of an expected full-blown invasion, Israeli forces also made limited ground incursions on Wednesday and Thursday nights.
“Following the series of strikes of the last days, the ground forces are extending the ground operations tonight,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters Friday.
Israel’s military also said it had increased its strikes “in a very significant way”, while the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said on Telegram it responded with “salvos of rockets”.
AFP live footage late Friday showed air strike after air strike light up the night sky of northern Gaza as thick black smoke clouded the horizon.
In a bombed-out street in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, 50-year-old Om Walid Basal asked why her apartment block had been bombed by Israel.
“This was our house, we lived here just with our children, it was full of children,” she said.
“Why are they bombing us? Why are they destroying our homes?”
Israel launched its bombardment of Gaza after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping over 220 others, according to Israeli officials.
The Hamas-run health ministry said Friday that Israeli strikes on Gaza had now killed 7,326 people, more than 3,000 of them children.
Hamas earlier said it was “ready” for an invasion.
“If (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu decides to enter Gaza tonight, the resistance is ready,” Ezzat al-Rishaq, a senior member of the Hamas political bureau, said on Telegram.
“The remains of his soldiers will be swallowed up by the land of Gaza.”
Hamas said all internet connections and communications across Gaza had been cut, and accused Israel of taking the measure “to perpetrate massacres with bloody retaliatory strikes from the air, land and sea”.
Human Rights Watch also warned that the near-total telecommunications blackout in Gaza risks providing cover for “mass atrocities”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent meanwhile said ambulance services had been disrupted.
“We have completely lost contact with the operations room in the Gaza Strip and all our teams operating there,” it said on X, formerly Twitter.
Lynne Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, also said on X that Gaza “has lost contact with the outside world”, cautioning that “hospitals & humanitarian operations can’t continue without communications”.
Israel’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas “entered a new phase” with the intense overnight bombing of the Gaza Strip, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Saturday.
“We have entered a new phase in the war. Last night the ground in Gaza shook. We attacked above ground and below ground,” Gallant said in a video statement, alluding to the network of military tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza.
“The instructions to the forces are clear: the action will continue until further notice.”
Hamas’ armed wing said Saturday it was ready to release the hostages it abducted during its shock attack on October 7 if Israel freed all Palestinians held in its prisons.
“The price to pay for the large number of enemy hostages in our hands is to empty the (Israeli) prisons of all Palestinian prisoners,” Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement broadcast by the Hamas-run Al-Aqsa television channel.
“If the enemy wants to close this file of detainees in one go, we are ready for it. If it wants to do it step-by-step, we are ready for that too.”
Some 229 hostages are being held by militants in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli army.
On Thursday, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said “almost 50” hostages had been killed in Israeli bombing raids in the three weeks since the war began. AFP was not immediately able to verify the figure.
Israel has been building up to a ground invasion since Hamas fighters stormed across the border on October 7, seizing hostages and killing more than 1,400 people, mainly civilians, Israeli officials say.
More than 7,700 people have been killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, including about 3,500 children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.