Israeli forces battled Hamas terrorists in southern Gaza as the conflict continued to escalate on Saturday.
Hamas compounds and anti-tank launching positions were among 120 targets in the Gaza Strip hit over the course of the day, the Times of Israel reported.
In what the Israel Defense Forces called a “targeted raid” into southern Gaza – one of the first skirmishes in that part of the enclave – members of a Hamas cell emerged from a tunnel to attack tanks and combat engineers. the Gaza Division, which had arrived to map buildings and remove planted explosives.
The IDF shelled the fighters, killing an unknown number of them, the army said.
In other developments:
- IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi entered the war zone for his first meeting with frontline troops there. Halevi conducted an “assessment” with the commander of the 162nd Division and other officers, according to a video released by the IDF.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended a summit in Amman, Jordan, with the foreign ministers of Lebanon, Jordan and Qatar, who demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. “The entire region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi. But Blinken argued that a ceasefire would “simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7.”
- Israel shared a disturbing video of the bloody aftermath of the Hamas massacre at the Tribe of Nova music festival to mark the fourth week since the October 7 terrorist attack that sparked the war. “Don’t look away,” read the post on the country’s official X account, alongside images of an IDF soldier discovering dozens of bloodied bodies of dead revelers on the desolate festival grounds.
- The family residence of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top political leader, was destroyed in an airstrike on the Shati refugee camp on the northern outskirts of Gaza City, Hamas-run media said. Haniyeh has lived in exile in Qatar since 2019, but the house was being used by his two children, a senior Hamas official said.
- The IDF accused Hamas of shooting at Israeli troops as they tried to secure a road for refugees fleeing south. The Salah a-Din Highway, a main road in the Gaza Strip, was opened for a three-hour period on Saturday to allow civilians to leave, but geolocated videos showed mortar and missile hits against a building where the security forces were working. troops, the IDF said. No injuries were reported.
- The Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, led by the flagship aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, arrived in the region on Saturday. according to US Central Command..
Pallets of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid were loaded onto a flight bound for Gaza at Orleans Air Base in France.REUTERS Anti-Israel protesters gathered in Washington, DC’s Freedom Square for the National March on Washington for Palestine .Getty Images
In northern Gaza on Saturday, infantry and tanks encountered multiple groups of Hamas operatives who emerged from tunnels to attack Israeli troops. In one incident, the IDF said, forces on the ground fought a group of 15 terrorists, killing several of them while shelling their observation posts.
Hamas claimed to have clashed with Israeli troops in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, a sign that the IDF has already advanced far into the densely populated heart of Gaza, apparently in an effort to expel all remaining civilians. to the south. , according to the BBC.
But two Israeli airstrikes hit outside a United Nations school in Gaza City that had been converted into a shelter, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said, killing several civilians.
Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Lebanon issued a security alert urging Americans to leave the country as the IDF released dramatic images showing Israeli warplanes attacking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to a projectile fired from Lebanese territory that same day.
Black smoke rose over Aita al-Shaab, a village in southern Lebanon, after an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah positions.AP
“Among the targets that were attacked were terrorist infrastructures, rocket warehouses and complexes used by the organization,” the IDF said. wrote in a post on.
On Friday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah threatened to escalate his terrorist group’s involvement in the war, but said he was “already doing his part” by bringing Israeli forces north to the Lebanese border. .
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant responded Saturday by warning Nasrallah not to “make a mistake.”
“We are not interested in entering a war in the north, but we are prepared for any task,” Gallant said. “If Nasrallah makes a mistake, he will seal the fate of Lebanon.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn