The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is \u201cexpanding ground operations\u201d in the Gaza Strip, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral\u00a0Daniel Hagari announced Friday, as intense airstrikes rocked the besieged enclave and with communications links reportedly severed. <\/p>\n
The IDF is \u201coperating forcefully\u201d on all fronts and will \u201ccontinue striking Gaza City,\u201d Hagari said, repeating previous warnings that civilians should evacuate. <\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t know if I (will) live to see the daylight tomorrow morning,\u201d Ammar said. \u201cI split from my wife, and the kids went to her parents\u2019 house, and I came to the hospital here in the event we die in different places and maybe one of us would live and our kids will live. Difficult choices we are making.\u201d <\/p>\n
A substantial ground offensive has been expected ever since the attacks, in which Hamas killed more than 1,400 people and saw some 200 people taken to Gaza as hostages. However, it is not yet clear whether the IDF announcement of an expanded operation signals the start of that push. <\/p>\n
This is the third night of Israeli ground actions in Gaza, as it amasses thousands of troops on the border with the enclave. It comes after weeks of bombardment and blockading Gaza, precipitating what aid agencies call a humanitarian crisis. <\/p>\n
Hamas has vowed to retaliate if Israeli ground troops enter Gaza. Izzat al-Rishq, a senior member of the Hamas political bureau, vowed that Hamas is ready to defeat\u00a0Israeli soldiers\u00a0if they enter the territory. <\/p>\n
Gaza appears largely cut off from the world, with communications in the enclave badly disrupted by airstrikes, according to Palestinian telecoms company Jawwal. London-based monitoring firm NetBlocks has also reported that the last standing major internet operator in the region, Paltel, has experienced damage to its international routes. <\/p>\n
Palestinian Authority\u00a0Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Israel\u00a0off cutting communications and internet to Gaza on Friday in an \u201cattempt to create darkness so that crimes can be committed\u201d in preparation for an IDF ground operation. <\/p>\n
Several United Nations agencies reported they lost contact with local staff in Gaza, and the number of UN staff killed in the enclave increased to 53 after 14 lost their lives in the past 24 hours, according to a statement by UN Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on Friday.<\/strong> <\/p>\n Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization had lost touch with its staff as well as with its \u201chealth facilities, health workers and the rest of our humanitarian partners on the ground.\u201d <\/p>\n Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that she is \u201cextremely concerned\u201d about her team in Gaza after losing touch with them. \u201cAll humanitarians and the children and families they serve MUST be protected,\u201d Russell added. <\/p>\n The continuous bombardment of Gaza since hostilities broke out after the bloody October 7 attack has led to a crisis in the impoverished and densely-populated enclave. More than 2 million people are affected, the main UN agency in Gaza, UNRWA,<\/strong> warned on Friday, adding that amid food and water shortages, sewage is overflowing on the streets. <\/p>\n Gaza hospitals have been forced to work with dwindling resources and power shortages; eyewitnesses at Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital said on Friday that the institution had been plunged into darkness, they said. <\/p>\n One eyewitness said Gaza has been \u201cleft in the dark with no connection to the outside world,\u201d adding the hospital has received the bodies of 11 people killed and dozens injured from the intensified bombardment. They expect casualties to rise. <\/p>\n Another eyewitness, Alla Majhool, said she came to the hospital because her four-year-old niece was injured in a previous strike. <\/p>\n \u201cI am terrified and shaking,\u00a0I\u00a0can\u2019t call my family and sisters to check on them, all we hear is explosions,\u201d Majhool said. \u201cIt\u2019s dark\u00a0and there are\u00a0no communications, we don\u2019t know where the airstrikes and artillery shelling is hitting.\u201d <\/p>\n The\u00a0Palestine Red Crescent Society said it has \u201ccompletely lost contact with the operations room in Gaza and all our teams operating there.\u201d <\/p>\n Phillipe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said earlier on Friday that while aid has begun to trickle into Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, deliveries so far amounted to \u201cnothing more than crumbs.\u201d <\/p>\n As the bombardment began, Jordanian foreign minister Ayman Safadi urged nations to vote for a United Nations resolution calling for a halt to the fighting, saying on social media that the outcome of any Israeli ground operation \u201cwill be a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions for years to come,\u201d he said. \u201cMillions will be watching every vote. History will judge.\u201d <\/p>\n An overwhelming majority of 120 nations voted for the resolution, which calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the war between Israel and Hamas and for aid to be allowed to flow unrestricted into the territory. The US and Israel sharply criticized the resolution text, however, for not explicitly criticizing Hamas. <\/p>\n Israel\u2019s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan asked the assembly, \u201cWhy are you defending murderers?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIsrael\u00a0just endured the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and according to a majority of the so-called family of nations,\u00a0Israel\u00a0has no right to defend itself,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Israel\u2019s expanded ground operation comes amid ongoing efforts to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Earlier on Friday, a source touted \u201csignificant progress\u201d\u00a0in negotiations. <\/p>\n When asked about a possible deal, IDF spokesperson Hagari told reporters to \u201cdisregard rumors.\u201d He dismissed reports that a hostage deal was close to being brokered as \u201cpsychological terror and a cynical use of Israeli civilians by Hamas.\u201d <\/p>\n The White House said it would not be appropriate to weigh in on Israel\u2019s expanded military campaign. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have, of course, certainly seen Israel undertake varied operations on the ground in the last couple of days,\u201d National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday. \u201cBut again, we\u2019re not going to get into the habit of chiming in from the sidelines here on what they\u2019re trying to do on the ground.\u201d <\/p>\n Kirby declined to say if Israel had informed the US before launching an expanded ground operation into Gaza Friday. He also declined to say if the Biden administration has confidence that Israel has fully considered the ramifications of a ground incursion. <\/p>\n This story is developing and will be updated.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is \u201cexpanding ground operations\u201d in the Gaza Strip, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral\u00a0Daniel Hagari announced Friday, as intense airstrikes rocked the besieged enclave and with communications links reportedly severed. The IDF is \u201coperating forcefully\u201d on all fronts and will \u201ccontinue striking Gaza City,\u201d Hagari said, repeating previous warnings that civilians should <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Efforts to free hostages ongoing<\/h2>\n