IDF Confirms Start of Southern Gaza Ground Campaign
The Israeli military has confirmed that has expanded its ground operation into the southern part of the Gaza Strip and has promised to continue the campaign with the same intensity as in northern Gaza.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Sunday evening that the operation was expanding to “all areas of the Gaza Strip” and that the campaign in the south would be “no less powerful” than the campaign in the north.
The Israel Defense Forces said this morning it had carried out strikes against some 200 Hamas targets in Gaza overnight, including in a school in northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun that had been used by operatives to attack troops. Inside the school complex, troops found two tunnel entrances, one of them booby-trapped, as well as weapons.
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The IDF also announced that it had destroyed over 500 of the 800 underground tunnels it had located since the war’s onset. The statement said soldiers were finding weapons and tunnel shafts “near or inside civilian buildings and structures, such as schools, kindergartens, mosques, and playgrounds.”
After the murderous rampage by Hamas terrorists in Israel on Oct. 7, Israel launched a series of air strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, followed on Oct. 27 by a ground operation in the north of the enclave. Palestinian civilians in the affected area were told to move south.
Since the end of the week-long cease-fire on Friday, Israel has begun targeting Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip, including conducting air strikes on the outskirts of the city of Khan Younis, where many Palestinians from the north have gathered.
Israel has drawn up an interactive map that divides the Gaza Strip into numbered zones and directs Palestinian civilians in targeted areas to leave for safe areas.
On Sunday, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters reported engaging with Israeli forces about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Khan Younis.
The IDF this morning announced the deaths of three soldiers in combat, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the ground offensive began in the Gaza Strip to 75.
