This may have been the beginning of a land incursion, which had been meticulously prepared since 7 October. The Israeli army announced late Friday that it was "expanding" its ground operations in the Gaza Strip, the target of unprecedented strikes since the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas began on October 7.
The UN, which is calling for a truce, fears an "unprecedented avalanche of suffering" in Gaza, a small, besieged and deprived territory where some 2.4 million people are crammed. The Israeli military will "expand its ground operations" in the Gaza Strip on Friday night, its spokesman Daniel Hagari said as intense shelling continues in the Palestinian territory.
'Military is prepared on all fronts to protect Israel's security.'
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari calls on all residents of Gaza to move south.
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Hamas on Friday night called on the world to "act immediately" to stop the bombing. The Israeli strikes, which were very intense according to AFP footage, began at 19:00 p.m. local time and continued more than an hour later. At the same time, communications and the internet have been cut off, according to the Hamas government, which has ruled the territory since 2007. AFP journalists in the Gaza Strip explained that they could only communicate in areas where they were picking up the Israeli network.
The bombings "from air, sea and land" were "the heaviest since the beginning of the war," Hamas said, accusing Israel of "preparing massacres." In response, the Palestinian Islamist movement announced that it had fired "salvos of rockets" into Israel. "Without fundamental change, the people of Gaza will suffer an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Friday.
Raids in Gaza
"Many more" people will "soon die" as a result of the siege imposed by Israel on Gaza since October 9, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said Friday in Jerusalem. The UN, also concerned about possible "war crimes", is calling for a truce in the fighting, which it says is the only option to deliver the humanitarian aid needed to meet the needs of some 2.4 million Gazans.
The United Nations General Assembly is set to vote on Friday on a non-binding resolution, already lambasted by Israel, calling for the truce, on the 21st day of the war. As a prelude to the ground operation announced on Friday night, the Israeli army had carried out a raid the previous night with ground troops backed by aircraft against Hamas, which it accused of waging war from hospitals and using the population as "human shields". Hamas immediately denied the claims in a statement.
Need for humanitarian assistance
Gaza is in urgent need of "significant and continuous" humanitarian aid, Lazzarini said. "Basic services are collapsing, supplies of medicine, food and water are running out, sewers are starting to overflow on the streets of Gaza," he said. Hamas' health ministry said 7,326 people, mostly civilians, including more than 3,000 children, were killed in the territory by shelling launched by Israel in response to the deadliest attack in its history. More than 1,400 people were killed on the Israeli side on October 7, mostly civilians massacred by Hamas that day, according to Israeli authorities.
A ground offensive in the crowded Gaza Strip has the international community worried, and calls for Israel to spare civilians are growing. European Union leaders on Thursday called for "pauses" in the conflict and the opening of humanitarian corridors to facilitate the delivery of international aid. French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called for a "humanitarian truce" to protect civilians, saying Israel's response must "better target" "terrorists." "The images we see of a suffering population in Gaza, and especially of the children ... it seems absolutely unacceptable to me," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Friday, adding that there is "legitimate doubt" about Israel's compliance with international law.
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Israel said it wanted to "annihilate" Hamas after the October 7 attack. On that day, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish holiday, and on the last day of the Sukkot holiday, hundreds of fighters from the Islamist movement infiltrated Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip, spreading terror. According to the Israeli military, 229 hostages, Israeli, dual nationals or foreigners, were taken to the Gaza Strip by Hamas, which has since released four women. Hamas estimated Thursday that "nearly 50" hostages were killed in the Israeli shelling.
Since October 21, 74 trucks of humanitarian aid have arrived in the Gaza Strip from Egypt, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Thursday evening, when at least <> a day are needed, according to the UN. "These few trucks are nothing but crumbs that won't make any difference" to the population, Lazzarini said.