The Japan Times - Israel expands ground offensive in Gaza City

Israel has pushed since the collapse of a short-lived truce in the war with Hamas to seize territory in Gaza in what it has called a strategy to force the militants to free hostages still in captivity.

Simultaneously, Israel has escalated attacks on Lebanon and Syria, with a strike in the south Lebanese city of Sidon killing a Hamas commander along with his son, who was also a member of the militant group's armed wing.

In Gaza City, the Israeli military said ground troops had begun conducting operations in the Shujaiya area "in order to expand the security zone".

Gaza's civil defence agency said that Israeli military operations had killed at least 30 people in the Palestinian territory since dawn, adding that the toll was "not final".

A single Israeli strike on Khan Yunis killed at least 25 people, a medical source at the southern city's Nasser Hospital told AFP.

"The situation is very dangerous, and there is death coming at us from every direction," Elena Halas told AFP via text message, adding that she and her family were trapped in her sister's house in Shujaiya.

Defence Minister Israel Katz had said on Wednesday that Israel would bolster its military presence inside the Gaza Strip to "destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure".

The operation would "seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones", he said, without specifying how much territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was dividing Gaza and "seizing territory" to force Hamas to free the remaining Israeli hostages seized in the militant group's October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war.

On Thursday, Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 31 people, including children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a school serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinians.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that women and children were among the dead, while six people were still unaccounted for in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City.

"One of the missing was a pregnant woman who was expecting twins," he said.

The Israeli military said it had struck a "Hamas command and control centre in the area of Gaza City".

It was unclear whether it was the same attack that hit the school.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed intense bombing on March 18, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,523.

The Israeli military said Thursday it had struck more than 600 "terror targets" across the Gaza Strip since fighting resumed.

- Lebanon strike -

In Lebanon, Hamas's military wing said that two of its members were killed in an Israeli strike after the Israeli military said the strike had killed a Hamas commander.

In a statement, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said commander Hassan Farhat had been killed "inside his apartment in the city of Sidon, southern Lebanon, along with his martyred daughter Jenan Hassan Farhat, and his son" Hamza, also a member of Hamas's military wing.

The Israeli military alleged that Farhat had orchestrated multiple attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians during the hostilities that followed the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023.

Those attacks included rocket fire on the Israeli town of Safed on February 14, 2024 that killed an Israeli soldier, the military added.

An AFP correspondent saw the fourth-floor flat still on fire after the strike, which caused heavy damage to the apartment block and neighbouring buildings and sparked panic in the densely populated neighbourhood.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the strike as a "flagrant attack on Lebanese sovereignty" and a breach of the November 27 ceasefire in the war between militant group Hezbollah and Israel.

Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah spiralled into all-out conflict last September, and the group remains a target of Israeli air strikes despite the ceasefire.

In Syria, it has conducted strikes on military targets across the country this week, defying a United Nations warning that such attacks "undermine efforts to build a new Syria" following president Bashar al-Assad's ouster in December.

H.Nakamura--JT