Israeli forces have shifted their focus to disrupting Hamas activities in Rafah, South Gaza, after days of intense fighting in north Gaza, military officials say.
Israeli forces have ended combat operations in the Jabalia area of north Gaza after destroying more than six miles of tunnels during days of intense fighting that included over 200 air strikes, the military said on Friday. At the south end of Gaza, Israeli forces pressing an offensive into Rafah found rocket launchers and other weapons as well as tunnel shafts built by Hamas in the city centre, the army said.
During the operation, troops recovered the bodies of seven of the 250 hostages Hamas-led militants abducted when they stormed over the border into Israel on Oct. 7 last year and killed around 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and land war in Gaza, its Hamas-run health ministry says, and much of the densely populated enclave lies in ruins.
Underground, Israel forces disabled a weapons-filled tunnel network extending over 10 km and killed Hamas' district battalion commander, it said. Israel has blamed what it calls Hamas' deliberate embedding of fighters in residential areas for the high civilian toll in the war. Hamas has denied using civilians as cover for fighters. Jabalia has been battered by intense combat for weeks, underscoring Israel's difficulty in destroying Hamas units.
Israeli tanks rumbled into the centre of Rafah on Tuesday as part of a series of probing operations around the area that has become one of the main focal points of the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month. The army said it had come across longer-range rockets as well as stocks of rocket-propelled grenades, explosives and ammunition as it continued 'intelligence-based operational activities' in Rafah, which skirts Gaza's border with Egypt.
Hundreds of thousands are now living in tents and other temporary shelters in a special evacuation zone in nearby Al-Mawasi, a sandy, palm tree-dotted district on the coast, as well as areas in central Gaza. Israel has signalled for weeks that it intended to mount an assault on the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah, drawing international condemnation and warnings even from allies like the United States not to attack the city while it remained full of displaced people.
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