Violent battles broke out in the streets of Gaza City, as Hamas fighters used tunnels to ambush Israeli forces.
The Israeli army said that its forces advanced to the center of Gaza City, the main stronghold of Hamas and the largest city in the coastal strip, while the movement said that its fighters inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli forces.
On Wednesday, the military wing of Hamas published a video clip that appeared to show fierce battles in the streets amid bombed buildings in Gaza City.
Sources from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement reported that Israeli tanks faced fierce resistance from Hamas fighters, who used tunnels to set up ambushes.
Israel is bombarding Gaza in response to an attack launched by Hamas fighters across the border into southern Israel on October 7, during which they killed 1,400 people, most of them civilians, and took about 240 hostages, according to the Israeli count.
Palestinian officials said that 10,569 people were killed as a result of Israeli bombing as of Wednesday, 40 percent of whom were children.
Israel says 33 of its soldiers were killed.
Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, told Al-Aqsa TV, affiliated with Hamas, on Wednesday that the movement’s fighters are determined to inflict losses on Israeli forces in ground battles in Gaza.
He added, “The more the occupation spreads and expands on the ground, the greater its losses.”
Footage from a clip posted by Hamas showed fighters in Gaza running through piles of rubble and stopping to fire rockets from shoulder-fired cannons at Israeli tanks.
50 thousand Palestinians are heading south
About 50,000 Palestinian civilians left the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, within a four-hour deadline announced by Israel.
The Israeli army repeatedly asked residents to evacuate the north or risk being surrounded in a cycle of violence, but the central and southern parts of the Strip were also under fire.
The Ministry of Interior in the Gaza Strip said that at least 19 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house near a hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday.
UN officials and G7 countries have intensified their appeals for a humanitarian truce in the war to help civilians in Gaza, where necessities including food, medicine and fuel are running out.
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2023-11-09 05:03:15
