Israeli tanks withdrew from the main Salah al-Din highway near Gaza City after briefly entering it, the Gaza government said on Monday. “There are no Israeli tanks on Salah al-Din Street, and the movement of citizens on the road has returned to normal,” the Government Media Office said in a statement.
Eyewitnesses earlier told Anadolu news agency that Israeli tanks entered from the town of Juhor Ad-Dik in the eastern Gaza Strip to Salah al-Din Street, southeast of Gaza City, on Sunday night.
They added that it coincided with heavy artillery shelling and airstrikes.
“The occupation is trying to create a false image of the presence of its forces inside Gaza, but they cannot remain in the territory under the blows of the resistance. There is no ground incursion into residential areas in the Gaza Strip,” it added.
The Israeli army said on Monday that it was “gradually advancing” in the Gaza Strip. “We are conducting an extended ground operation in the Belt,” said military spokesman Daniel Hagari. He added that additional Israeli troops had entered the Gaza Strip over the past day. “Offensive activity in Gaza will continue to intensify in accordance with the phases of the conflict and its objectives,” Hagari stressed.
The Israeli army announced today that its forces killed dozens of Hamas fighters during last night’s fighting in Gaza. And Hamas said there was “intense fighting” in the northern Gaza Strip for the third night in a row, as Israel stepped up and expanded ground operations with soldiers and tanks, France press reports. The Israeli army has been operating in Gaza since Friday evening.
The Israeli army confirmed today that it hit “more than 600” targets in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, according to information provided to Agence France Presse.
The statement states that among the targets are “weapons warehouses, dozens of positions for launching anti-tank rockets, as well as hideouts used by the terrorist organization Hamas.”
Israel announced yesterday that it has increased the number of its troops and the scope of operations in the Palestinian enclave, as it has significantly increased its strikes since Friday, with the aim of “destroying” Hamas. Israel as well as the US and the EU consider Hamas a “terrorist” organization. Thousands of people have died in the war, which was launched by the bloody incursion of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, and which entered its 24th day today.
Hamas has reported that more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in Israeli bombings since the start of the war. On the Israeli side, more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed, the highest number during the attack carried out by Hamas on Israel on October 7. The Gaza Strip has been bombarded by the Israeli army continuously in response to the attack, during which Hamas also took more than 230 people hostage. That Palestinian territory has been under a “total siege” since October 9, cutting off water, food and electricity to the population.
According to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), 33 aid trucks entered Gaza yesterday, the largest convoy since the first trucks released on October 21. A total of 117 trucks have entered Gaza since that date, according to a report released today. The UN office believes that this is insufficient aid and fears a further worsening of the already catastrophic humanitarian situation, as well as civil unrest.
