Israel has restarted ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip and killed at least 25 people in airstrikes on the southern city of Khan Younis in what it says is a renewed military campaign aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages.
At least 25 people were killed in the attack on Khan Younis early on Friday, the local Nasser hospital told AFP, as the search for survivors continued.
More than 1,250 Palestinians in the besieged territory have been killed in Israeli bombings since 18 March, including at least 100 people on Thursday alone in airstrikes that hit three schools turned shelters. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the targets were Hamas control centres.
According to the UN, 280,000 people have been forced to leave their homes or shelters since Israel decided to abandon a two-month-old ceasefire with Hamas, cutting off aid and fuel on 2 March and resuming large-scale bombing two weeks later.
Ground troops have since re-entered the strip’s southernmost city of Rafah and the Netzarim corridor that cuts off Gaza City from the rest of the territory. On Friday, the IDF said troops were advancing in Shuja’iya, a northern suburb of Gaza City.
Israeli officials vowed this week to seize large swathes of the strip as security zones and establish a new military corridor between Rafah and Khan Younis, exacerbating Palestinian fears of permanent displacement and annexation.
Friday also saw escalations on other fronts in the regional conflagration set in motion by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on southern Israel. Israel says 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken captive in the attack; all but 59 have since been released in hostage and detainee swaps. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign on Gaza has killed at least 50,600 people, most of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
In Lebanon on Friday, the Israeli military said it had killed Hassan Farhat, a senior Hamas commander, in an airstrike on the southern city of Sidon, a move that threatens to upset the fragile truce signed in November with the Hamas-allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The bombing came after Israel targeted what it said were Hezbollah facilities in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, last week for the first time since the ceasefire went into effect. That attack was launched in response to rocket fire aimed at northern Israel, which neither Hamas nor Hezbollah claimed responsibility for.
Tensions between Israel and the new transitional government in Syria are also rising after a wave of Israeli airstrikes across the country and a deepening Israeli ground incursion in the Daraa border area on Thursday, in which 13 people were killed.
Israel has long targeted Hezbollah and Iranian assets in Syria but has continued its bombing campaign since Islamist-led rebel groups forced the dictator Bashar al-Assad to flee the country in December. It has also seized land in southern Syria and warned that Islamist groups must stay away from Israeli territory.
Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister of Turkey, which backs the new regime in Damascus, on Friday accused Israel of fuelling regional instability.
“Israel is taking out, one by one, all these capabilities that a new state can use against Isis and other terrorist threats,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of a Nato summit in Brussels. “What Israel is doing in Syria is not only threatening the security of Syria, but also is paving the way for future instability of the region.”
Also on Friday, the Israeli army confirmed troops killed a Palestinian teenager after shooting at a group of boys and young men throwing stones near the occupied West Bank village of Husan the night before. Palestinian officials gave his name as Yusef Zaoul, 17. The IDF did not comment on the deceased’s name or age.
