Israel launches heavy attacks on Gaza City as ceasefire talks continue

CAIRO – Israeli forces bombarded Gaza City on Monday morning, with columns of tanks advancing into the city center from various directions in what residents said was one of the heaviest attacks on the Palestinian territory since the war began.

The Gaza Emergency Service estimated that dozens of people had been killed, but emergency services were unable to respond to the scene due to ongoing offensives in Daraj and Tuffah in the east and Tel Al-Hawa, Sabra and Rimal further west.

Residents said neighborhoods in Gaza City, in the north of the Gaza Strip, were bombed throughout the night and into the early hours of the morning. Several multi-story buildings were destroyed, they added.

An Israeli tank advance pushed people towards the West Road near the Mediterranean Sea, residents reported.

More:Hopes for ceasefire in Gaza rise after Israel announces resumption of stalled talks

“The enemy is behind us and the sea is in front of us. Where should we go?” a Gaza City resident who identified himself as Abdel-Ghani told Reuters.

“Tank shells and rockets from planes are raining down on the streets and houses like a volcano. People are running in all directions and no one knows where to go,” he said via a chat app.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it was launching an operation against militant infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and had incapacitated more than 30 fighters.

The new Israeli offensive comes as Egypt, Qatar and the United States step up mediation efforts to broker a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas as the Gaza war enters its tenth month.

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The war began on October 7, when fighters led by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli sources.

According to health authorities in the Gaza Strip, more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military offensive since then.

Gaza residents said tanks advanced from at least three directions on Monday, reaching the center of Gaza, backed by heavy Israeli air and ground fire. Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes and search for safer shelters, which many found impossible to find. Some slept on the side of the road.

Doctors at Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital had to evacuate patients to the already overcrowded and under-equipped Indonesian hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian health officials said. An Israeli strike in the eastern suburb of Shejaia killed four Palestinians, doctors said.

The Israeli military said it had warned civilians of its operations and opened a route for civilians to leave the affected areas. It said fighters from Hamas and its allied group Islamic Jihad were hiding behind civilian infrastructure to attack Israeli forces.

The Palestinian Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said they fired mortar shells at Israeli forces during the attack in southwest Gaza City.

Talks on crisis management continue

Gaza residents’ hopes for a halt to fighting were revived after Hamas accepted a key part of a US ceasefire proposal, prompting an official from the Israeli negotiating team to say there was a real chance of an agreement.

Hamas has dropped its demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before it can sign an agreement. Instead, the militant group said it would allow negotiations during the first six-week phase to achieve this, a Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that the agreement should not prevent Israel from resuming fighting until its war aims have been achieved. These aims were defined at the beginning of the war as the destruction of Hamas’ military and governmental capacities and the release of Israeli hostages.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that it would be a big mistake to stop the Israeli offensive now.

Smotrich, head of a settler party that is part of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, wrote on the social media platform X: “Hamas is collapsing and begging for a ceasefire. Now is the moment to grab the enemy until it is destroyed and broken. To stop now, close to the end, and let it recover and fight us again is senseless folly.”

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