GAZA STRIP (AFP) – Israel’s military on Friday said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in northern Gaza, killing “dozens” of militants in an area where it had declared the command structure of Hamas dismantled months ago.
The operation in Shujaiya, on the edge of Gaza City, caused numerous casualties, witnesses and medics said on Thursday when it began.
Renewed fighting in Gaza’s north followed comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said the “intense phase” of the war was winding down after almost nine months.
Experts said they foresee a potentially prolonged next phase.
On Friday in the Shujaiya area, an AFP correspondent witnessed an air strike and saw smoke rising. Artillery fire boomed.
In a statement, Israel’s military said that, overnight on Thursday, troops “started to conduct targeted raids” in the Shujaiya area as part of an operation that began earlier in the day.
Intelligence had indicated “the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area of Shujaiya”, the military said, in its first details of the operation.
The Palestinian militant group said on Friday it was fighting in the northern Gaza neighbourhood of Shujaiya and had targeted Israeli troops with mortar shells.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces had targeted the agency’s headquarters while advancing in western Rafah.
Multiple agency staff were wounded, while two fire engines, an ambulance and an excavator used for rescuing people from under rubble were damaged, one of the agency’s officials Mohammad al-Mughair told AFP.
On Thursday, a military spokesman told residents and displaced Gazans in a social media message to leave “for your safety”.
They were asked to head south, to a declared “humanitarian zone” about 25 kilometres away.
An AFP photographer saw many Palestinians leaving on foot, carrying their belongings through rubble-strewn streets.
The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that “about 60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from the area. Hamas said Israeli forces were “starting a ground incursion”, reporting “several” dead as “thousands flee under relentless bombing”.
