Israeli Military Says Troops Make First Ground Raids In Gaza
Israel has said its infantry and tanks had carried out raids inside the Gaza Strip on Friday, its first announcement of a shift from an air war to ground operations to root out Hamas fighters a week after their deadly rampage in southern Israel.
Some Gaza residents were abandoning homes on Friday to escape from the path of an Israeli onslaught, after Israel ordered more than a million people to leave the northern half of the Gaza Strip within 24 hours. Hamas told them not to go.
Israeli Military Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said troops backed by tanks had mounted raids to attack Palestinian rocket crews.
Several thousand residents could be seen on roads heading out of the northern part of the Gaza strip, but it was impossible to tell their numbers. Many others said they would not go.
Hamas, which controls the densely populated Palestinian territory, vowed to fight until the last drop of blood. The Israeli Military said a significant number of Gazans had begun moving southwards “to save themselves“.
“Death is better than leaving,” said Mohammad, 20, standing in the street outside a building reduced to rubble in an Israeli air strike two days ago near the centre of Gaza.
“I was born here, and I will die here, leaving is a stigma.”
Mosques broadcast the message: “Hold on to your homes. Hold on to your land”.
“We tell the people of Northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places,” Eyad Al-Bozom, Spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, told a news conference.
The U.N. said Israel’s call for Gaza civilians to leave was impossible to carry out “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
“The noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening. How are 1.1 million people supposed to move across a densely populated war zone in less than 24 hours?” U.N. Aid Chief Martin Griffiths wrote on social media.
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jordan that the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza would constitute a repeat of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from what is now Israel. Most Gazans are the descendants of such refugees.
Gaza is already one of the most crowded places on earth, and for now there is no way out. Israel has imposed a total blockade, and Egypt, which also has a border with the enclave, has so far resisted calls to open it to fleeing residents.
Cairo said Israel’s call on Gazans to leave their homes was a violation of international humanitarian law that would put civilians in danger.
REUTERS
