ShareGAZA: Hamas said it fired rockets at Tel Aviv on Thursday in its first military response to the growing civilian death toll from the Zionist entity’s resumption of air and ground operations in Gaza. The Zionist entity said it had closed off the territory’s main north-south route as troops expanded the ground operations they resumed on Wednesday.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said 504 people had been killed so far in the Zionist assault, including more than 190 children. Its previous death toll was at least 470. At least 85 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in Zionist airstrikes across Gaza on Thursday. The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said it fired rockets at Tel Aviv in response to the Zionist entity’s “massacres” of Gaza civilians.
After weeks of stalemate, the Zionist entity resumed its air campaign early Tuesday with a wave of deadly strikes that drew widespread condemnation. The offensive shattered a relative calm that had pervaded in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory since a ceasefire took hold on Jan 19.
At the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, grieving families knelt by the bodies of their loved ones enveloped in blood-stained white shrouds. “We want a ceasefire! We want a ceasefire!” one of them, Mohammed Hussein, told AFPTV, appealing for the international community to stop the killing. “We are defenseless Palestinian people,” he added.
On Thursday, the Zionist army banned traffic on the territory’s main north-south artery. Palestinians were seen fleeing south along Salaheddin Road near the Nusseirat refugee camp atop donkey-drawn carts piled high with belongings. “Over the past 24 hours, IDF soldiers have begun a targeted ground operation in the central and southern Gaza Strip in order to expand the security zone between the northern and southern parts,” Zionist army spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
Movement along Salaheddin Road between the north and south of the Gaza Strip is prohibited “for your safety”, he said. “Instead, travel from northern Gaza to the south is possible via the Al-Rashid coastal road,” Adraee added, without spelling out whether that meant movement from south to north was banned.
An official from Gaza’s interior ministry said the Zionist army had closed what it calls Netzarim Junction, on Salaheddin Road just south of Gaza City, on Wednesday evening. The official said Zionist tanks had deployed at the junction, where the road artery crosses the Zionist entity’s main supply route, “following the withdrawal of American special security forces yesterday (Wednesday) morning”.
He was referring to American private security contractors deployed in February after the pullback of Zionist forces under the terms of the January ceasefire. The first stage of the ceasefire expired early this month amid deadlock over next steps. The Zionist entity rejected negotiations for a promised second stage, calling instead for the return of all of its remaining hostages under an extended first stage. That would have meant delaying talks on a lasting ceasefire, and was rejected by Hamas as an attempt to renegotiate the original deal.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) on Thursday deplored “an endless unleashing of the most inhumane ordeals” on the people of Gaza since the Zionist entity resumed its military offensive. “Israeli Forces bombardment continues from air & sea for the third day,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. “Under our daily watch, people in Gaza are again & again going through their worst nightmare.” Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the Zionist entity’s latest strikes on Gaza a “catastrophic crime” and said the United States “shares responsibility”.
Among the dead is a worker for the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) who the Gaza health ministry said was killed in a Zionist strike on the agency’s headquarters in Deir el-Balah. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called for a “transparent investigation” into the strike on the UN compound in which a UK citizen was among five wounded. The overall death toll in Gaza since the start of the war stands at 49,617, according to the territory’s health ministry. – Agencies
