This image grab from an AFP TV footage shows balls of fire rising above Gaza City during an Israeli strike on October 27, 2023, as battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement continue. Photo: AFP
Israeli air and ground forces are stepping up operations in the Gaza Strip, Israel's chief military spokesperson said on Friday, amid reports of heavy bombing of the besieged enclave, where internet and mobile phone services were cut off.
"In the last hours, we intensified the attacks in Gaza," Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a televised news briefing.
He said the air force was conducting extensive strikes on tunnels and other infrastructure.
"In addition to the attacks carried out in the last few days, ground forces are expanding their operations tonight," he said, raising expectations that the long-anticipated ground invasion of Gaza may be beginning.
Israeli forces have massed outside Gaza, where Israel has been conducting an intense campaign of aerial bombardment since a deadly 7 October attack on Israel by the Islamist movement Hamas.
Earlier on Friday, Palestinian mobile phone service provider Jawwal said that services including phone and internet had been cut by heavy bombardment.
A statement from the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had completely lost contact with its operations room in Gaza and all its teams operating on the ground.
Release of hostages needs ceasefire, Hamas official says
An official of the militant Hamas group conditioned the release of hostages in Gaza to a ceasefire in Israel's bombardment of the Palestinian enclave, launched after a deadly rampage into southern Israel nearly three weeks ago.
Israel says it is preparing a ground invasion, but has been urged by the US and Arab countries to delay an operation that would multiply the number of civilian casualties in the densely populated coastal strip and might ignite a wider conflict.
Two US fighter jets struck weapons and ammunition facilities in Syria on Friday in retaliation for attacks on US forces by Iranian-backed militias since the Gaza war erupted.
An opinion poll on Friday suggested almost half of Israelis now wanted to hold off on a ground invasion out of fears for at least 224 hostages reported to be held there.
The Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted a member of a Hamas delegation visiting Moscow as saying time was needed to locate all those abducted by various Palestinian factions in the Hamas attack on 7 October.
"They seized dozens of people, most of them civilians, and we need time to find them in the Gaza Strip and then release them," Abu Hamid said.
He said Hamas, which has freed four hostages so far, had made clear it intended to release "civilian prisoners".
Yocheved Lifshitz, centre, speaks to the media alongside her daughter Sharone Lifschitz, left, outside Ichilov Hospital on October 24, 2023 in Tel Aviv, Israel after she was released by Hamas. Photo: Getty Images
But this required a "calm environment", he said, repeating an assertion that Israeli bombing had killed 50 of those held.
Hamas officials in Moscow said they viewed all their hostages as Israelis, whatever additional passports they held, and could not release any of them until Israel agreed to a ceasefire, according to Russian media.
Qatar meanwhile told the US it was open to reconsidering the continued presence of Hamas in Qatar once a hostage release deal has been secured, a senior US official said.
There was no immediate response from Qatar, which, with the US, is leading hostage mediation talks with Hamas and Israel.
Palestinian militants clashed with Israeli troops in at least two areas in the Gaza Strip, the latest of several small-scale incursions, Hamas-affiliated media reported. The Israeli military did not immediately confirm the reports.
Israel said its fighter jets had struck three senior Hamas operatives who played significant roles in the 7 October attack, though there was no confirmation by Hamas.
Israel's military said the air force intercepted an aerial threat in the area of the Red Sea, without elaborating.
In early afternoon, rocket sirens sounded throughout southern Israel and an Israeli medic said three people had been wounded when a missile hit Tel Aviv.
Further north, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah said it had carried out a number of attacks on Israeli positions.
In Jerusalem, Israeli security forces restricted young Palestinians from entering Al-Aqsa mosque for prayers as part of measures to quell any unrest linked to the conflict in Gaza.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops killed four Palestinians during raids, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said. Two of the dead were members of militant factions.
Gaza civilians desperate
A man walks with mattresses through destruction in the Gaza Strip's Jabalia refugee camp on October 11, 2023, following overnight Israeli airstrikes amid continuing battles between Israel and the Hamas movement. Photo: AFP / Mahmud Hams
In the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, an air strike killed the pregnant wife of a Palestinian lawyer, Jehad Al-Kafarnah.
"My life, my heart, I love you," Kafarnah wrote, weeping, on the white sheeting wrapped around his wife's body. The body of her 8-month-old stillborn child, also wrapped in white, was held in his arms.
As Gaza's 2.3 million civilians grow more desperate under a siege that has cut supplies of power, water, food, fuel and medicine, the issue of aid comes before the 193-member UN General Assembly in New York on Friday.
Unlike in the UN Security Council, where resolutions on aid for Gaza failed this week, there can be no veto on the resolution by Arab states calling for a ceasefire, which will not be binding but will carry political weight.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says more than 600,000 Gazans have been made homeless.
Ten more trucks of food and medical supplies arrived in Gaza from Egypt, along with 10 foreign doctors who were the first to enter since Israel tightened its blockade nearly three weeks ago, a Palestinian official said.
This made for around 84 trucks in three weeks. The UN says Gaza needs around 100 relief trucks every day, and the official said negotiations were taking place with Israel, which wants to prevent resources reaching Hamas, to speed things up.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said many more trucks needed to enter Gaza "without delay".
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said 57 UNRWA workers had been killed in Israeli bombardments.
UN human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani became emotional when describing conditions for UN staff: "Many of them are sleeping out in the open ... You have to make calculations about whether a ceiling collapsing on you or being hit by shrapnel is more likely to happen."
US strikes Syrian bases
Calls for restraint stem not only from concern for Gaza's civilians and Israeli hostages, but also fears that the crisis could spark conflict across the Middle East.
US President Joe Biden ordered overnight strikes on two Syrian bases used by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and militias that it backs, the Pentagon said, after issuing a rare direct warning to Iran not to attack US troops.
US troops in Iraq brought down a drone near an airbase which hosts US and other international forces in western Iraq, a US defence official said.
Israel says Hamas killed some 1400 people including children in its October 7 rampage.
The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said 7326 Palestinians had been killed in the retaliatory air strikes, including around 3000 children.
Biden has cast doubt on casualty figures provided by Palestinian officials in Gaza, but international aid agencies say they are broadly accurate and have been reliable in the past.
-Reuters