ATTACKS ON GAZA INTENSIFY BY ISRAEL IN PREPARATION FOR ‘NEXT STAGES OF THE WAR’, SAYS MILITARY

Palestinians in North Gaza receive stern warnings from Israel‘s military, urging them to relocate South, or face potential association with a “terrorist organization.”

Sun 22 October 2023:

Israel pounded southern Gaza with airstrikes early on Sunday and said it would intensify attacks in the enclave’s north, as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his cabinet late on Saturday, reportedly to discuss an expected ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian media reported at least 11 people were killed in an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, and that Israel was striking the southern city of Rafah.

The strikes came hours after Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari called on Gaza’s residents to move south “for your own safety”. He said the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) would step up airstrikes from Saturday in preparation for the next stage of the war. “We will deepen our attacks to minimise the dangers to our forces in the next stages of the war. We are going to increase the attacks, from today,” Hagari said.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday that Israel’s retaliatory attacks had killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, with more than a million of the territory’s 2.3 million people displaced. It comes after an attack on southern Israel by Hamas that killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in a shock rampage that has traumatised Israel.

The US said late on Saturday it would send more air defence systems to the Middle East and prepare to move in more troops following attacks on its forces in Iraq and warnings from militants against intervening to support Israel against Hamas.

Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the fenced border around Gaza for a planned ground invasion aiming to annihilate Hamas, after several inconclusive wars dating to its seizure of power there in 2007. “We are going to go into the Gaza Strip … to destroy Hamas operatives and Hamas infrastructure,” chief of staff Lieut Gen Herzi Halevi told troops in a video distributed by the Israeli military on Saturday. “We will have in our mind the memories of the images and those who fell on Saturday two weeks ago.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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