“Our operations against Hamas have moved deeper into Gaza City, targeting their main stronghold. We are engaged in combat, facing terrorists both above and below ground,” Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said in an English-language video statement Sunday evening.
His remarks came after, earlier that day, two rockets were fired from northern Gaza at Israel, causing no injuries.
Defrin added that “Israel continues to ensure that corridors remain open for civilians to move south, toward safer areas. Until now, 550,000 people have moved south.”
“The IDF is continuing to enhance the humanitarian area and encourage residents to leave the combat zones. At Kerem Shalom crossing, thousands of tents and supplies are waiting right now for collection by the UN and international organizations,” he continued.
“We call on the international organizations to take this aid and deliver it directly to the Gazan people. In recent weeks alone, Israel has enabled the entry of over 24,000 tents into Gaza. Israel is ensuring civilians can keep out of harm’s way, enabling access to food, shelter and medicine,” Defrin said.
Defrin asserted that this week, “Hamas opened fire on a UN team, and used stolen UN vehicles to block the construction of a new road for future aid trucks,” as well as “robbed four UNICEF aid trucks at gunpoint — depriving 2,700 infants of baby formula.”
“Hamas continues to violently obstruct civilians from evacuating combat zones. Hamas doesn’t protect Gazans; they sacrifice them,” he said. “Hamas has shown the world its true strategy: to exploit its own people and prolong this war. That strategy will not succeed.”
He asserted the IDF has “no other choice but to fight for our future. Our forces are working day and night, turning over every stone, to bring our hostages home, dismantle Hamas’s terror networks, and secure a safer region for all.”
The IDF spokesman pointed out that, “as the Jewish New Year arrives, 48 hostages remain in the grip of Hamas. Their captivity is an unfinished chapter of this war — and we will not close it until they are home. We have no other choice.”
Around one million Palestinians were estimated to be residing in Gaza City before the IDF launched its new offensive. The military has ordered Palestinians in all areas of Gaza City to evacuate to an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” in the Strip’s south.
The IDF said Sunday that despite its efforts, it has identified attempts by Hamas to prevent civilians from moving to southern Gaza, “in violation of international law, while cruelly exploiting the civilian population as a human shield for terror activities.”
Three IDF divisions, the 162nd, 98th and 36th, completed their entry to Gaza City in recent days, and have begun “operations in the Hamas terror strongholds” in the area, the army said Sunday.
Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health authorities said Sunday that Israeli strikes killed more than 40 people, including 19 women and children. The figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Health officials at Shifa Hospital, where most of the bodies were brought, said the dead included 14 people killed in a strike late Saturday, which hit a residential block in the southern side of the city. Health staff said a nurse who worked at the hospital was among the dead, along with his wife and three children.
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