Israel’s military claims it has fully dismantled Hamas’s command network in northern Gaza, killing around 8,000 militants in that area in the process.
“We are now focused on dismantling Hamas in the centre of and south of the (Gaza) strip,” Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Saturday.
“Fighting will continue during 2024. We are operating according to a plan to achieve the war’s goals, to dismantle Hamas in the north and south,” Mr Hagari said on the eve of the conflict’s three-month anniversary.
Israel’s ground assault and aerial bombardment of Gaza began after Hamas launched a terror attack on southern Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, with many civilians among them. More than 100 hostages are still believed to be held by Hamas and other Islamist militant groups in Gaza.
Israeli forces have killed more than 22,000 Palestinians during the war as of Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials. Neither their tally, nor Israel’s claims to have killed 8,000 militants, have been independently verified.
While Israel denies targeting non-combatants and says Hamas fighters are embedding themselves among the civilian population, Palestinian officials say their death toll figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians, and that 70 per cent of Gaza’s dead are women and children.
The fighting has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population, who were ordered to evacuate northern Gaza at the start of the fighting.
Many homes and key aspects of civilian infrastructure in the strip have been leftz in ruins and an Israeli blockade has resulted in acute shortages of food, water and medicine.
Fighting intensified on Saturday in Gaza, especially in the densely populated southern coastal city of Khan Younis, where Israel said it had killed Hamas members.
“We were in al-Shati refugee camp and they dropped fliers saying Gaza is a battlefield, so we fled to Khan Younis because it was a safe place, and they still bombed us,” said 11-year-old Mahmoud Awad, whose parents and siblings were killed in the airstrike, according to Reuters.
On Sunday, world leaders were due to discuss strategies to prevent the war from spreading from Israel and the Palestinian territories into neighbouring Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Red Sea shipping lanes.
“We have an intense focus on preventing this conflict from spreading,” US secretary of state Antony Blinken told reporters before heading to Jordan, his fourth trip to the region since 7 October.
The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell expressed alarm in Beirut about exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, and the risk of the conflict spilling over into the wider region.
“Diplomatic channels have to stay open. War is not the only option, it’s the worst option,” Mr Borrell said.
Additional reporting by agencies
