On the 22nd day of the war between Israel and Hamas, fighting has been raging for several hours in the Gaza Strip. Despite the difficulties in obtaining clear information — communications and the Internet have been cut off in Gaza — here's what we know about the situation on Saturday morning.
The Israeli army announced that it had struck 150 underground targets. "During the night (Friday to Saturday), IDF fighter jets struck 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip, including tunnels used by terrorists, underground combat sites and other underground infrastructure," it said in a statement Saturday morning.
On Friday, it said it had intensified its bombing "in a very significant way" in what appears to be the beginning of the "ground invasion" announced at the start of the war on October 7.
Artillery tanks and fighter planes
According to AFP journalists stationed in the area, the bombardment of the Gaza Strip continued on Saturday morning, but less intensively than during the night. According to one of them, based in Ashkelon (in southern Israel, less than 10 kilometers from the border), hours of non-stop shelling and strikes rattled windows into the night.
Read also"No place is safe": in the Gaza Strip, the bombing also affects the south
According to AFP and Guardian journalists near the Gaza Strip border, the night's shelling came from artillery tanks but also from the sea and air, via fighter jets. If the morning is calmer, sporadic explosions still take place.
Communications and internet have been cut off in the Palestinian enclave. The shutdown, coupled with intensified shelling, "augurs well for new killings that the occupier intends to carry out out of sight of the media and the world," Hamas said in a statement Friday.
Death of Hamas leader announced
"Several Hamas terrorists were killed," Israel said in its statement. On Twitter, the Israeli military claimed to have targeted the head of Hamas' air formation, Asem Abu Rakaba, overnight.
"Asem Abu Rakaba took part in organizing the massacre in communities bordering the Gaza Strip on October 7," the IDF statement said. He had directed terrorists who had infiltrated Israel with paramotors and he was responsible for drone attacks on IDF surveillance posts. »
More contact with the population
The UN General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly called for an "immediate humanitarian truce," a non-binding resolution called "infamy" by Israel but welcomed by Hamas.
Read alsoIsrael-Hamas war: why the "humanitarian truce" demanded by Macron is not to everyone's taste
The shutdown of telecommunications and internet in the Gaza Strip "risks being used as a cover for mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations," Deborah Brown, an official with the human rights group Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
The shutdown "means that it will be even more difficult to obtain critical information and evidence about human rights violations and war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians in Gaza," Amnesty International said, adding that it has lost contact with its staff in Gaza.