THE Gaza Strip has come under its third total communications outage since the start of the war, while Israel’s military announced it had encircled Gaza City and divided the besieged coastal territory into two.
“Today there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against the Hamas militant group.
Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours.
But the “new collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org, and confirmed by Palestinian telecom company Paltel, made it even more complicated to share details on the new stage of the military offensive.
“We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team members,” UN Palestinian refugee agency spokeswoman Juliette Touma told the Associated Press. The first Gaza outage lasted 36 hours and the second one for a few hours, complicating efforts to share events on the ground.
Earlier on Sunday, Israeli planes struck two central Gaza refugee camps, killing at least 53 people and wounding dozens, health officials said.
Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite US appeals for even brief pauses to get aid to desperate civilians.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, a number likely to rise as Israeli troops advance into dense urban neighbourhoods.
Air strikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp overnight, killing at least 40 people and wounding 34 others, the Health Ministry said. The camp is in the zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians to seek refuge as it focuses its offensive on the north.
An AP reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, brought in after the strike.
Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli strike flattened several multi-storey homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.
“It was a true massacre,” he said. “All here are peaceful people. I challenge anyone who says there were resistance (fighters) here.”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Another air strike hit a house near a school at the Bureji refugee camp in central Gaza, and staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital told the AP at least 13 people were killed. The camp is home to an estimated 46,000 people and was struck on Thursday as well.
Despite appeals and overseas demonstrations, Israel has continued its bombardment across the Gaza Strip, saying it is targeting Hamas and accusing it of using civilians as human shields.
Critics say Israel’s strikes are often disproportionate, considering the large number of civilians killed.
