Israel sent tanks into eastern Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip early on Sunday, after a night of heavy aerial and ground bombardments, killing 19 people and wounding dozens of others, health officials said.
Jabalia is the biggest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps and is home to more than 100,000 people, most of whom were descendants of Palestinians who were driven from towns and villages in what is now Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to the creation the state of Israel.
Late on Saturday, the Israeli military said forces operating in Jabalia were preventing Hamas, which controls Gaza, from re-establishing its military capabilities there.
“We identified in the past weeks attempts by Hamas to rehabilitate its military capabilities in Jabalia. We are operating there to eliminate those attempts,” said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, Israel’s military spokesperson, during a briefing to reporters.
Hagari also said that Israeli forces operating in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district killed about 30 Palestinian militants.
“Bombardment from the air and ground hasn’t stopped since yesterday, they were bombing everywhere, including near schools that are housing people who lost their houses,” said Saed, 45, a resident of Jabalia.
“War is restarting, this is how it looks in Jabalia,” he told Reuters via a chat app. “The new incursion forces many families to evacuate.”
The army sent tanks back into Al-Zeitoun, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, as well as Al-Sabra, where residents also reported heavy bombardments that destroyed several houses, including high-rise residential buildings.
The army had claimed to have gained control of most of these areas months ago.
Tanks did not invade eastern Deir Al-Balah city, residents and Hamas media said, but some Israeli tanks and bulldozers penetrated the fence on the outskirts of the city prompting a gunfight with Hamas fighters.
3 lakh flee Rafah
The main United Nations agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza said early on Sunday that about 3,00,000 people had fled over the past week from Rafah, the city in the enclave’s southernmost tip where more than a million displaced Gazans had sought shelter from Israeli bombardments elsewhere over the past seven months.
The UN agency, known as UNRWA, made the announcement on social media hours after the Israeli government issued new evacuation orders in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza.