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Palestinians flee the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday along Salah al-Din Street in Bureij.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip >> Gaza lost communications on Sunday in its third general blackout since the Israel-Hamas war, while the Israeli military said it had encircled Gaza City and split the besieged coastal strip in two.
“Today there is northern Gaza and southern Gaza,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters, calling it “an important step” in Israel’s war against the militant Hamas organization that regulates the enclave. Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza. City in 48 hours. Loud explosions were observed in northern Gaza after dark.
The “breakdown of connectivity” across Gaza, reported through the Internet Access Defense Group NetBlocks. org and shown through the Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel, has made it even more confusing to convey the main points of the army’s new level of offensive.
“We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team,” Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the U. N. firm for Palestinian refugees, told The Associated Press. The first blackout in Gaza lasted 36 hours and then a few hours.
Earlier Sunday, Israeli warplanes struck two refugee camps, killing at least 53 other people and wounding dozens in central Gaza, the area where the Israeli military had suggested Palestinian civilians seek shelter, health officials said. Israel has said it will continue its offensive to weigh down Hamas, despite U. S. calls for brief pauses to bring aid to desperate civilians.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said more than 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in just one month of war in Gaza, totaling more than 4,000 young people and children. The death toll is likely to rise as Israeli troops advance into dense urban neighborhoods.
Airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp, killing at least 40 other people and wounding 34 others, the Health Ministry said. An AP reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight children dead, plus a baby brought in after the attack. down the hallway, his clothes covered in dust.
Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multi-storey houses where others forced to flee other parts of Gaza were sheltering.
“It’s a real massacre,” he said. Everyone here is a non-violent person. I defy anyone who says there is resistance (fighters) here. “
There was no immediate comment from the IDF.
Another airstrike hit an area near a school in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Staff at Al-Aqsa hospital told the AP that at least 13 other people were killed. The camp was also attacked on Thursday.
Despite calls and protests abroad, Israel has continued to bomb Gaza, saying it targets Hamas and taking advantage of militants using civilians as human shields. Critics say Israel’s measures are disproportionate, given the gigantic number of civilians killed.
On the floor, Israeli forces in Gaza reported finding stockpiles of weapons, as well as explosives, suicide drones and missiles. The Israeli military said 29 of its infantrymen were killed in the operation.
U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, a day after meeting with Arab ministers in Jordan.
Abbas, who has had no authority in Gaza since Hamas seized power in 2007, said the Palestinian Authority would only take control of Gaza as part of a “comprehensive political solution” that would build an independent state that included Israel’s West Bank and East Jerusalem. It took over the 1967 war.
His comments appeared to further attenuate the already limited differences over who would rule Gaza if Israel overthrew Hamas. The last peace talks with Israel broke down more than a decade ago, and the Israeli government is governed by warring parts of the Palestinian state.
Blinken then traveled to Iraq to meet with Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to discuss a desire to prevent the conflict from spreading and efforts to increase aid to Gaza, which Blinken called “manifestly inadequate,” to about 100 trucks a day. day.
A Jordanian army cargo plane dropped medical aid at a hospital in northern Gaza, King Abdullah II said on social media on Monday. This is an early relief from Jordan, a key best friend of the United States that has a peace agreement with Israel.
Early in his tour, Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reiterated Sunday that “there will be no ceasefire without the return of our hostages. “
Arab leaders have called for an early ceasefire. But Blinken said he would “just leave Hamas in place, to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” when it stormed southern Israel from Gaza, triggering the war.
Large areas of residential neighborhoods in northern Gaza were razed to the ground by airstrikes. The U. N. Office of Humanitarian Affairs says more than a fraction of the remaining residents, estimated at about 300,000 people, are taking refuge in U. N. -run facilities. The U. N. said Sunday that 88 members of its Palestinian refugee enterprise were killed — “the highest U. N. death toll ever recorded in a single conflict. “
Israeli jets dropped leaflets urging others to head south within four hours on Sunday. Crowds marched along Gaza’s main north-south highway, carrying luggage or pets and pushing wheelchairs. Others drove donkey carts.
One man said he walked 500 meters with his hands in the air as he passed Israeli troops. Another said he saw dead bodies along the road. “Young people saw tanks for the first time. O world, have mercy on us,” said a Palestinian who refused. to give his name.
The Israeli military said a one-way corridor would still allow citizens to flee to southern Gaza.
The U. N. has said about 1. 5 million people in Gaza, or 70 percent of the population, have fled their homes. The food, water and fuel needed for the turbines that force hospitals are running out. No fuel has arrived for about a century a month, the U. N. firm for Palestinian refugees said.
The war has stoked broader tensions, with Israel and the Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah exchanging fire along the border.
Four civilians were killed Sunday night during an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, in addition to three children, a civil defense official and state media reported. The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets in reaction to anti-tank fire that killed an Israeli civilian. In reaction, it fired Grad rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli arrest raid in Abu Dis, just outside Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The army said an activist who set up an armed mobile and fired at Israeli forces was killed.
At least 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war.
Many Israelis have called for Netanyahu’s resignation and the return of some 240 hostages held by Hamas. Some families abroad must try to make sure the hostages are not forgotten.
Netanyahu has refused to take responsibility for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 people. Relentless Palestinian rocket fire has forced tens of thousands of people in Israel from their homes.
In a reflection of widespread anger, a young government minister, Amihai Eliyahu, warned in a radio interview that Israel could simply drop an atomic bomb on Gaza. He then called the comments “metaphorical. ” Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from cabinet meetings, a move with no practical effect.
The U. S. military said Sunday it has located an Ohio-class nuclear submarine in the Middle East, though it’s unclear whether it’s armed with nuclear ballistic missiles. Several Ohio-class submarines are equipped with cruise missiles and have the capability to deploy with special operations forces.
Jobain reported from Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip and Chehayeb from Beirut. Associated Press editors Matthew Lee in Ramallah, West Bank; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Cara Anna in New York contributed to this report.
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