Gaza suffered a near-total communications blackout, with internet and phone services down for more than 12 hours on Saturday morning. The Palestinian Red Crescent declared that Israel had cut off communications.
Hagari also said Israel would allow trucks carrying food, water and medicine into Gaza on Saturday, indicating that shelling could stop, at least in the area along its border with Egypt, where small amounts of aid have been arriving.
Aid agencies have said a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza, whose 2.3 million people are under a complete blockade by Israel. Health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave have stated that more than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israeli bombing began.
World Health Organization (WHO) director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the communications blackout was “making it impossible” for ambulances to reach the wounded in Gaza.
“The evacuation of patients is not possible in these circumstances, nor is it possible to find a safe haven,” he said in X.
He and the Red Crescent and the UN children’s fund UNICEF said they could not contact their staff or facilities.
Al Jazeera, which broadcast live satellite television footage overnight showing frequent explosions in Gaza, said Israeli airstrikes had hit areas near the enclave’s main hospital, Al Shifa, in northern Gaza City. .
The Israeli military on Friday accused Hamas of using the hospital as a shield for its tunnels and operational centers, an accusation the group denied.
Reuters could not verify reports of attacks near the hospital. Doctors Without Borders was especially concerned for the patients, medical staff and the thousands of families sheltered there and in other health centers.
An Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting live on Saturday morning, described the outage of telephone and internet communications as “catastrophic” for rescue efforts after a night of intense Israeli shelling.
Unable to access ambulance services, Palestinians transported the dead and wounded to the hospital in their cars, according to the correspondent. The Hamas government declared that rescue teams could not receive emergency calls.
The spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry stated on Al Jazeera on Saturday that the death toll in Gaza had reached 7,703 and that 19,734 people had been injured. Israel said it had no news of casualties among its troops.
RELATIVES OF HOSTAGES SCARED, FURIOUS AND DEFIANT
Some of the relatives of people captured in Israel during the Hamas assault on October 7 demanded an urgent meeting with the Israeli government after what they called “the most terrible night of all.”
“None of the members of the war cabinet bothered to meet with the families of the hostages to explain one thing to them: whether the ground operation endangers the well-being of the 229 hostages in Gaza,” declared the headquarters of the Forum of Families of Hostages and Disappeared.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he would meet with representatives of the hostages’ families on Sunday. Among the hostages are children and the elderly and many people with foreign passports. So far four women have been released.
Another relative of the hostages, Yosi Shnaider, had previously said that Israel’s military operation was the only way to free them. “We can’t wait any longer,” he said.
There has been growing speculation that a Qatari-brokered deal to free more hostages is imminent, but Israeli military spokesman Hagari said Hamas was cynically manipulating the situation.
“When the information (about the release of hostages) is in our hands, we will give it away,” he declared at a press conference.
ISRAELI VIDEOS SHOW TANKS AND AIR STRIKES
The Israeli Army released images of ground forces, including a column of tanks, operating inside the Gaza Strip, although it did not specify when they were from. It also showed multiple airstrikes destroying buildings during the night.
The warplanes killed the head of Hamas’s air wing, Asem Abu Rakaba, responsible for Hamas’ unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, paragliders, aerial detection and air defense for the October 7 attack on southern Israeli cities. , according to the statement.
“He led terrorists who infiltrated Israel on paragliders and was responsible for drone attacks on IDF posts,” the IDF said.
The warplanes had also struck 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip, including Hamas tunnels, underground fighting spaces and other underground infrastructure, killing others in the group.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said early Saturday that its fighters were clashing with Israeli troops in the northeastern Gaza city of Beit Hanoun and in the central area of Al Bureij.
The United States and other Western countries have offered strong support to Israel but urged it not to launch a ground offensive for fear that high Palestinian casualties would fuel a broader conflict.
Hamas is backed by Iran, which also supports militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. American troops have been attacked by Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria, and Washington has shifted more military resources to the region.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie, Nidal al-Mughrabi; Additional reporting by Riham Alkousaa, Omar Abdel-Razek, Ari Rabinovitch, Adam Makary, Ali Swafta, Michelle Nichols and Rami Ayyub; Writing by David Brunnstrom, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Philippa Fletcher; Edited in Spanish by Ricardo Figueroa)
Source: Ambito
