By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Portal) – Israel bombarded Gaza with more airstrikes on Monday as its soldiers battled Hamas militants on the ground in raids in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 436 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in the past 24 hours, most of them in the south of the narrow, densely populated Gaza Strip.
In a sign of a widening conflict, Israeli planes also attacked southern Lebanon overnight and Israeli troops fought Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, residents said.
The United Nations said desperate civilians lacked food, water and shelter from the relentless airstrikes that have leveled swathes of the Hamas-ruled enclave.
Some of the aid flowed into Gaza via a border crossing – but only a fraction of the amount needed.
At least 5,087 Palestinians have been killed in two weeks of Israeli attacks, including 2,055 children, the enclave’s health ministry said in an update.
The Israeli bombardment was triggered by a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Israeli communities on October 7, in which 1,400 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
Both Israel and Hamas reported nightly clashes in Gaza.
Israel said ground troops were conducting limited raids to combat Palestinian gunmen and that the airstrikes were focused on locations where Hamas was gathering to ambush a larger Israeli invasion.
“At night there were raids by tank and infantry troops. These raids are raids that kill terrorist squads as they prepare for our next phase in the war. These are raids that go into depth,” said chief military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari at a briefing.
The raids were also aimed at gathering information about the 222 hostages held by the Islamist Hamas, he said.
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza said at least 18 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured in an Israeli airstrike that hit houses in the Al-Saudi and Janina neighborhoods of Rafah, near Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters engaged with an Israeli force that had entered Gaza and destroyed some Israeli military equipment.
The group said the infiltration by a so-called armored force took place east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
“Militants attacked the invading force, destroying two bulldozers and a tank and forcing the force to retreat before safely returning to base,” it said in a statement. There was no Israeli comment on the destruction of equipment.
The Al-Qassam Brigades also said Monday that it fired rockets at the southern Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Mavki’im. Warning sirens wailed on the Israeli side.
GROUND ATTACK EXPECTED
Earlier on Monday, the Israeli military said it had struck more than 320 targets in Gaza in the past 24 hours, including a tunnel housing Hamas fighters, dozens of command and lookout posts, and mortar and anti-tank rocket launcher positions.
Israeli troops and tanks are now massed on the Israel-Gaza border, but how soon they might launch a ground invasion to destroy Hamas was unclear.
The Middle East’s most powerful military faces a group that has built a large arsenal with Iran’s help, fighting in a crowded urban environment and using a vast network of tunnels.
Asked by Israeli Army Radio whether Washington was urging Israel to show restraint, Eliav Benjamin, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the US, said: “They understand that we are waging war in accordance with our interests. Ultimately, we will do what we have to do when we have to do it.
The U.N. Humanitarian Office (OCHA) said about 1.4 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now internally displaced, with many seeking refuge in overcrowded U.N. shelters.
Israel has ordered Gaza residents to evacuate the north. But the OCHA said it believed hundreds and possibly thousands of people who had fled were now returning to the north due to increased bombing in the south and a lack of shelter.
Fears that the war between Israel and Hamas could escalate into a larger conflict in the Middle East grew over the weekend as Washington warned of a significant threat to U.S. interests in the region and announced a new deployment of advanced air defense systems.
Along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group clashed with Israeli forces supporting Hamas. It was the deadliest escalation of border violence since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
SPREADING VIOLENCE
Early Monday, Israeli aircraft attacked two Hezbollah cells in Lebanon that were attempting to fire anti-tank missiles and rockets into Israel, the Israeli military said. Israel had also attacked other Hezbollah targets, including a compound and an observation post.
Hezbollah said Monday one of its fighters had been killed, without giving details. The Israeli military says seven soldiers have been killed on the Lebanese border since the start of the latest conflict.
Iranian security officials told Portal Iran’s strategy is for Middle Eastern proxies such as Hezbollah to carry out limited attacks on Israeli and US targets but avoid a major escalation that would bring Tehran.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, two Palestinians were killed in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry said.
Local residents told Portal that Israeli forces raided the camp and arrested many people as there were clashes with armed men and some youths throwing stones. The Israeli army has not issued a statement on the incident.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called for international unity to stop Israel’s attacks in Gaza and provide aid. A second convoy of 14 aid trucks reached the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to Gaza on Sunday evening.
The U.N. humanitarian office said the amount of aid arriving so far was just 4% of the daily average before hostilities and a fraction of what was needed.
The aid deliveries did not contain fuel.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Dan Williams and Emily Rose in Jerusalem; Writing by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Mark Heinrich)