Israel strikes Gaza, Syria & West Bank as war threatens to ignite other fronts
Rafah: Israeli warplanes struck targets across Gaza overnight and into Sunday, as well as two airports in Syria and a mosque in the occupied West Bank allegedly used by militants, as the 2-week-old war with Hamas threatened to spiral into a broader conflict.
Israel has traded fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group on a near-daily basis since the war began, and tensions are soaring in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have battled militants in refugee camps and carried out two airstrikes in
recent days.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told troops in northern Israel that if Hezbollah launches a war against Israel, “it will make the mistake of its life. We will cripple it with a force it cannot even imagine and the consequences for it and the Lebanese state will be devastating”.
For days, Israel has seemed to be on the verge of launching a ground offensive in Gaza as part of its response to Hamas’ deadly October 7 rampage. Tanks and tens of thousands of troops have massed at the border, and Israeli leaders have spoken of an undefined next stage in operations.
Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the country had increased airstrikes across Gaza to hit targets that would reduce the risk to troops in the next stage of the war.
Hamas said it fought with Israeli forces near Khan Younis in southern Gaza and destroyed a tank and two bulldozers. The Israeli military said it had no information about the claim.
On Saturday, 20 trucks entered Gaza in the first aid shipment into the territory since Israel imposed a complete siege two weeks ago.
Egypt’s state-run media reported 17 more trucks crossing into Gaza on Sunday, but the United Nations said none had crossed.
“Until now, there is no convoy,” said Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Associated Press journalists saw seven fuel trucks head into Gaza, but Touma and the Israeli military said those trucks were taking fuel that had been stored on the Gaza side of the crossing deeper into the territory, and that no fuel had entered from Egypt.
In a sign of how precarious any movement of aid remains, two Egyptian officials said Israeli shells hit close to the Egyptian side of the crossing on Sunday, wounding nine Egyptian border guards. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.
The Israeli military said a tank had accidentally fired and hit an Egyptian post, and the incident was being investigated. It apologised for the incident.
Relief workers said far more aid was needed to address the spiralling humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where half the territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes. The UN humanitarian agency, known as OCHA, said Saturday’s convoy carried about 4 per cent of an average day’s imports before the war and “a fraction of what is needed after 13 days of complete siege”.
The Israeli military said the humanitarian situation was “under control”, even as OCHA called for 100 trucks a day to enter.
Israel repeated its calls for people to leave northern Gaza, including by dropping leaflets from the air. It says an estimated 700,000 have already fled, but hundreds of thousands remain. That would raise the risk of mass civilian casualties in any ground offensive.
Israeli military officials say Hamas’ infrastructure and underground tunnel system are concentrated in Gaza City, in the north, and that the next stage of the offensive will include unprecedented force there.
