Israel wages ground campaign in Gaza, communications blackout eases
Israel has told doctors to evacuate key hospital
Monday, 30 October 2023
JERUSALEM/GAZA, Oct 29 (Agencies): Israel is expanding ground operations in Gaza and its fighter jets have struck hundreds more Hamas targets, the Israeli military said on Sunday, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the second phase of a three-week-old war.
Telephone and internet communications were partially restored in Gaza after a more than day-long blackout that had badly impacted rescue operations as Israel pounded targets of the militant Hamas group that controls the territory.
Doctors and the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza say Israel has told them to evacuate a key hospital in Gaza City.
There are 400 patients being treated inside Al-Quds hospital and moving them is impossible, the Palestinian Red Cross says.
Overnight, thousands in Gaza broke into aid depots taking flour and other basic supplies, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees says.
Phone lines and internet connections are slowly returning after more than a day of almost total communications blackout in Gaza.
Israel has been bombing Gaza since the 7 October Hamas attacks that killed 1,400 people and saw 230 people kidnapped as hostages.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 8,000 people have been killed since Israel's retaliatory bombing began.
"Israel cut us off from the world in order to wipe us out, but we are hearing the sounds of explosions and we are proud the resistance fighters have stopped them at meters distance," said Shaban Ahmed, a public servant who stayed in Gaza City despite an Israeli warning to evacuate south.
Ahmed said he only found out on Sunday that his cousin had been killed in an air strike on Friday because of the blackout.
Israeli Defence Force (IDF) fighter jets struck over 450 military targets belonging to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including operational command centres, observation posts, and anti-tank missile launch posts, the military said.
Israel has tightened its blockade and bombarded Gaza for three weeks since Hamas militants killed at least 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostage in an Oct. 7 cross-border attack.