TEL AVIV – The Israeli military said Friday that its ground forces are “expanding” their activities in Gaza, potentially marking the start of a new phase in Israel’s war with Hamas that began nearly three weeks ago.
Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said in a statement that Israeli forces had increased attacks in the Gaza Strip in recent hours.
“In addition to the attacks we have carried out in recent days, ground forces are expanding their activities this evening,” Hagari said. “The IDF is acting with great force … to achieve the war goals.”
The extent of the expanded activity was unclear, but two U.S. officials told CBS News that this appeared to be a rolling start to the ground invasion.
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This came as internet and phone services in the Gaza Strip collapsed under heavy bombardment, the Associated Press reported. Paltel, the Palestinian telecommunications company, said there was “a complete disruption of all communications and internet services” due to the bombing, the AP reported.
The country’s military said on Friday that Israeli forces had carried out a ground attack on Gaza for the second straight night. The small attack was supported by fighter jets and drones, with the IDF saying it hit dozens of targets on the outskirts of Gaza City. The IDF said the small raid resulted in no Israeli casualties.
The Israeli army carries out heavy air strikes on the Gaza Strip on the 21st day of its war with Hamas, October 27, 2023. Gaza was plunged into darkness without electricity or fuel supplies. Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images
According to the IDF, the previous ground attack early Thursday morning lasted several hours, hit rocket-launching positions and included skirmishes with militants. Hagari said Thursday that the ground attacks were aimed at “exposing the enemy” and destroying launch pads and explosives to “prepare the ground for the next phases of the war.”
The Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip, along with other Palestinian militants, opened their bloody terrorist attack on southern Israel on October 7 with a volley of thousands of rockets and have continued to fire them from the enclave for almost three weeks.
Most Hamas rockets are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, but at least one got through on Friday and hit Tel Aviv, causing “significant destruction,” according to civil disaster relief organization United Hatzalah. Three people were slightly injured.
Israel has responded to the unprecedented terrorist attack and sustained rocket fire – in which it says it has killed more than 1,400 people and Hamas has held nearly 230 hostages – with overwhelming artillery and airstrikes on Gaza.
Health authorities in the densely populated Hamas-controlled region say more than 7,000 people have been killed. The Israeli military disputes that figure, but entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble, sometimes entire families crushed under the ruins of residential buildings.
What a rolling start to the Israeli ground attack might look like
Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, a former U.S. Central Command commander, said Israeli ground troops have advanced into the Gaza Strip in nighttime raids in recent days, but a rolling launch would be different.
“A rolling launch will be an operation where you deploy reconnaissance forces, get a feel for the battlefield and then pull your main forces behind you,” McKenzie told CBS News on Friday.
The Pentagon sent a Marine general with experience in special operations and urban combat to advise the Israelis on how to proceed. He has since left Israel.
“They will likely have multiple lines of advance into Gaza, and Israeli commanders will see where they succeed,” McKenzie said. “The axiom is: they reinforce success. Where you gain ground, you use more forces.”
“You should think of it as multiple beachheads… all over the front,” he added.
Civilian deaths are increasing in Gaza
Raw, overwhelming grief is everywhere in Gaza.
“What has he done?” a man shouted as he cradled the body of his two-and-a-half-month-old son in his arms. He lost his wife and four children in an Israeli attack on a house in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “Did he kill someone? Did he kidnap someone? There were only innocent children in this house.”
The death toll in Gaza has been rising rapidly, and although Israel and Hamas disagree on how high the number is – and who is responsible – it is believed to be the number killed in the four previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas combined far exceed the number of people killed.
People search buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip on October 27, 2023 in Khan Younis, Gaza. Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty
Every day, shrouded corpses pile up outside Gaza’s overcrowded hospitals and morgues, while more and more seriously injured people arrive, many in need of urgent medical attention. But Palestinian doctors are often unable to offer much more than words of comfort as fuel for generators and medical supplies are in short supply.
The United Nations, along with a growing number of nations and aid groups, have warned that the long-awaited Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, if it were to take place, would cause even more civilian casualties and deepen the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
The U.N. General Assembly voted on Friday to adopt a non-binding resolution backed by Jordan calling for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities. The US voted against the resolution after rejecting an amendment that would have condemned Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel and called for the release of hostages.
How martial law applies to fighting between Israel and Hamas
On Thursday, the United Nations joined warnings from international rights experts and humanitarian groups that Israel may respond to Hamas’s atrocious war crimes with war crimes of its own.
“We are concerned that war crimes are being committed,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office, told reporters in Geneva on Friday. “We are concerned about the collective punishment of Gazans in response to Hamas’ atrocious attacks, which also constituted war crimes.”
Iran’s allies and fear of a widening war
There are also major and increasing concerns that a full-scale invasion could lead to the war spreading beyond Gaza and Israel’s borders.
The US struck two facilities used by Iran-backed militants in eastern Syria overnight. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the attacks were “in response to a series of ongoing and largely unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed militia groups that began on October 17.”
Austen said the attacks were different from the war between Israel and Hamas and were intended to convey that President Biden “will not tolerate such attacks and will defend himself, his personnel and his interests.”
What role does Syria play as the war in Israel impacts the Middle East?
Iran is a major backer of a number of Muslim extremist groups across the region, including the Sunni Muslim Hamas in Gaza and the powerful Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement, based just across Israel’s northern border in Lebanon. Hezbollah fighters have exchanged sporadic deadly fire with Israeli forces since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, and the group has said it is ready to join Hamas in the war with Israel if necessary.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced additional sanctions on Friday against a handful of individuals and entities it accuses of facilitating Hamas’s funding, including Khaled Qaddoumi, whom the Treasury Department described as a “long-time Hamas member currently living in Tehran and as Hamas representative in Iran,” describes acting as a liaison between Hamas and the Iranian government.”
Iran has also long supported Shiite groups operating in parts of northern Iraq and neighboring Syria, and it is these proxy forces that have for years fired missiles and explosive drones at U.S. forces stationed in the two countries.
There is a trade conflict between Israel and Hezbollah
Another powerful Iranian-backed group, the Shiite Muslim Houthi movement, is waging a civil war against Yemen’s Western-backed government. The U.S. military said it shot down a handful of Houthis-fired missiles and drones over the Red Sea on Oct. 19 that it said may have been aimed at Israel.
The Iranian army launched a large-scale military exercise in the central province of Isfahan on Friday that was scheduled to last two days. A military spokesman told Iranian state media that the war game would involve troops from all units of the army’s ground forces, including an airborne division, drone squads, electronic warfare units and support teams from the Iranian Air Force.
President Biden has repeatedly warned Iran against directly interfering in the war between Israel and Hamas.
On Friday, an Egyptian military spokesman said a drone hit a building near a medical facility in the city of Taba, close to the Israeli border, injuring six people. It was not immediately clear who launched the drone.
Family members and friends of residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, who were kidnapped by Hamas militants during the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, gather outside Kirya, the Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 26, 2023. Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty
Pressure from the families of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also growing. Many of the family members gathered in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening to voice their demand for the Israeli government to rescue their loved ones, while Hamas claimed unconfirmed that Israel’s airstrikes had already killed more than 50 of the prisoners.
As families gathered, air raid sirens wailed again, warning of more rocket attacks and forcing protesters to run for cover.
–David Martin and Pamela Falk contributed reporting.
Israel and Hamas at war
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