LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
- Israel expands air, ground operations on Gaza, striking dozens of underground tunnels, bunkers and telecommunications equipment as military spokesperson announces Israel is “advancing in the stages of war,” and that “troops still remain in the field.”
- Israeli Defense official: Tel Aviv will allow trucks carrying food, water and medicine to enter Gaza on Saturday, indicating a possible pause in bombing, at least in the area of its border with Egypt where small amounts of aid have been arriving.
- The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas militants.
- IDF says it targeted strikes on Hamas air chief Asem Abu Rakaba, the figure responsible for the militant group’s UAVs, drones, paragliders and aerial defense.
Israeli warplanes bombed Hamas tunnels and underground bunkers in the northern Gaza Strip, military officials said early Saturday, as part of an expanded ground and air assault to crush the enclave’s ruling Hamas militants after its bloody incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago.
Israel Defense Forces said fighter jets struck dozens of underground targets and knocked out key communications infrastructure, causing a near-blackout of information and severing Gaza’s estimated 2.3 million residents from contact with the outside world.
“We are advancing in the stages of war. Last night, IDF forces entered the Gaza Strip and expanded ground activity,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at an early Saturday news briefing.
“The forces still remain in the field and are continuing the war‚” said the IDF spokesman, signaling Israel’s sustained ground incursion had likely begun.
Israel had previously made only brief sorties into Gaza during weeks of intense bombardment.
Hagari also said Israel would allow trucks carrying food, water and medicine to enter Gaza on Saturday, indicating a possible pause in bombing, at least along its border with Egypt where small amounts of aid have been arriving.
“Overnight, IDF fighter jets struck Asem Abu Rakaba, the Head of Hamas’ Aerial Array,” IDF posted on X, formerly Twitter, indicating it may have killed the militant group’s air chief.
“Abu Rakaba was responsible for Hamas’ UAVs, drones, paragliders, aerial detection and defense,” the post continued. “He took part in planning the October 7 massacre and commanded the terrorists who infiltrated Israel on paragliders and was responsible for the drone attacks on IDF posts.”
IDF officials also said they downed a surface-to-air missile fired from inside Lebanon at an IDF drone. Spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on X that the IDF was “attacking the source of the missile launch.” Adraee said earlier that an Israeli jet struck a Hezbollah military structure, which had fired missiles toward Israel that landed in Syria.
Hamas on Saturday pledged to confront Israeli attacks with “full force” after Israel’s military widened its air and ground attacks on the Palestinian enclave. The al-Qassam brigades, an armed wing of Hamas, said early on Saturday its fighters were clashing with Israeli troops in Gaza’s northeastern town of Beit Hanoun and in the central area of Al-Bureij.
“Al-Qassam Brigades and all Palestinian resistance forces are fully prepared to confront the aggression with full force and thwart the incursions,” it said.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said he had seen reports about Israel expanding its ground operations in Gaza but would not comment on it.
Israel has gathered 300,000 reservists and troops outside Gaza in preparation for the incursion against the militant group Hamas. Israeli airstrikes have been pummeling Gaza since Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack on Israel killing some 1,400 people, including children, and taking more than 200 hostages.
Kirby said the U.S. supports a pause in Israeli military activity in Gaza to get humanitarian aid, fuel and electricity to civilians there and as part of an effort, if possible, to get the more than 200 hostages abducted by Hamas out of Gaza.
Earlier on Friday, Palestinian mobile phone service provider Jawwal said that services, including mobile and landline phones and internet, had been cut by heavy bombardment. The cutoff meant that casualties from strikes and details of ground incursions could not immediately be known. Some satellite phones continued to function.
A statement from the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had completely lost contact with its operations room in Gaza and all its teams operating on the ground.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted Saturday that his organization still has no communication with its staff and health facilities in Gaza, adding: “I’m worried about their safety.”
UN General Assembly vote
The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas and demanded aid access to the besieged Gaza Strip and protection of civilians.
The resolution drafted by Arab states was passed with 120 votes in favor, while 45 countries abstained and 14, including Israel and the United States, voted no. The General Assembly voted after the Security Council failed four times in the past two weeks to take action. Israel called the U.N. resolution “infamy.”
Israel is rejecting calls for a temporary truce in Gaza while the international community is troubled at the deteriorating conditions for 2.3 million people trapped under the heaviest air strikes Israel has ever conducted on the Mediterranean enclave.
“Israel is opposed to a humanitarian pause or cease-fire at this time,” Lior Haiat, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said on Friday, while a senior Israeli official said calls for a pause in fighting appeared in “poor faith.”
Hamas welcomed the General Assembly’s call for a Gaza humanitarian truce.
Late Friday, a senior member of the Hamas political bureau, Ezzat al-Rishaq, said Hamas is ready for an Israeli invasion in Gaza. “If [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu decided to enter Gaza tonight, the resistance is ready,” he said on the social media app Telegram.
Israeli officials have pledged to ensure Hamas can no longer carry out attacks that threaten Israel following its October 7 massacre.
As Israeli airstrikes ravage swaths of the Gaza Strip, residents there are running out of food, water and other supplies. The death toll in Gaza has reached more than 7,000 people, the majority women and children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The ministry, which tracks the death toll, released a detailed list of names and ID numbers on Thursday, including more than 2,900 minors and more than 1,500 women.
World Health Organization official Richard Peeperkorn said on Friday the agency had received estimates that 1,000 unidentified bodies are still under the rubble in Gaza and are not yet included in death tolls, according to Reuters. Peeperkorn did not specify the source.
In an early Friday press conference, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, in the Near East, confirmed that 57 staff members have been killed in Gaza since war began, including 15 in one day.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
