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Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - JERUSALEM, March 24 — Israel’s military pressed ground operations across the Gaza Strip yesterday, encircling part of Rafah city near Egypt almost a week into a renewed assault on the Palestinian territory.
Deployment of Israeli troops in parts of Gaza, despite calls to revive a January truce with Hamas militants, comes alongside a deadly flare-up in Lebanon and missiles fired from Yemen.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said yesterday that the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel had killed at least 50,021 people in the territory.
AFP was unable to independently verify the figure. Gaza’s civil defence agency said separately, citing its own records, that the death toll had topped 50,000 people.
Hamas’s attack on Israel resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Israeli troops yesterday encircled Tal al-Sultan in Rafah, the military said in a statement, adding its objective was to “dismantle terrorist infrastructure and eliminate” militants there.
Earlier yesterday, Israel had warned residents of the area to evacuate.
Rafah, in southern Gaza, had already been the target of a major Israeli offensive about a year ago.
At a charity kitchen in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city just north of Rafah, 19-year-old Iman al-Bardawil said many displaced Palestinians are struggling to “afford food and drink” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
“I’m here to get rice for the children, but it’s gone,” said Saed Abu al-Jidyan, who like Bardawil had fled his home in northern Gaza.
“The crossings are closed, and my salary has been suspended since the beginning of the war,” he said. “There is no food in Gaza.”
With fuel unable to enter the territory, AFP images showed Gazans collecting books from the bombed-out Islamic University in Gaza City to use for cooking fires.
Palestinians prepare to set out to Khan Yunis with their belongings, from Rafah's Tel al-Sultan area after it was encircled by Israeli forces on March 23, 2025. Israel's military pressed ground operations across the Gaza Strip on March 23, encircling part of Rafah city including the Tel al-sultan area, nearly a week into a renewed assault on the Palestinian territory. — AFP pic
Top Hamas officials killed
Three weeks ago, Israel blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut electricity in a bid to force Hamas to accept the Israeli terms for an extension of the ceasefire and release the 58 hostages still held by Palestinian militants.
On Tuesday, Israel also restarted intense air strikes across the territory.
On Friday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had ordered the army to “seize more territory in Gaza”, warning Israel could annex it if Hamas failed to heed Israel’s demands for the next steps in the truce process.
The comments prompted France to say it opposed “any form of annexation”, while France, Britain and Germany jointly said the resumption of Israeli strikes was “a dramatic step backward”.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas will be in Israel and the occupied West Bank today to press for “an immediate return to the full implementation of the ceasefire-hostage release agreement”, her diplomatic service said.
Hamas has accused Israel of sacrificing the hostages with its resumption of bombardments. Many families of the captives have called for a renewed ceasefire, noting that most of those returned alive were freed during truce periods.
The Israeli military yesterday said it was conducting operations in Beit Hanun, northern Gaza, where “fighter jets struck several Hamas targets”.
An Israeli strike on a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, in the Khan Yunis area, killed senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil and his wife, the Islamist movement said in a statement yesterday.
Palestinians try to put out a fire at the emergency department of the Nasser hospital after it was hit in an Israeli airstrike, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip March 23, 2025. — AFP pic
Air force jets also struck the emergency department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing another Hamas political bureau official, Ismail Barhoum, as he underwent treatment, the group and Israel said.
Israel has now killed four members of Hamas’s political bureau since the resumption of its air strikes.
Bardawil, Israel’s military said, had “directed the strategic and military planning” of Hamas in Gaza and his “elimination further degrades Hamas’s military and government capabilities”, it added.
The targeting of Barhoum with “precise munitions” came after extensive intelligence-gathering, it added.
Smoke billows from the site of Israeli artillery shelling that targeted the area of the southern Lebanese village of Yohmor on March 22, 2025. An Israeli strike on the south Lebanese town of Touline killed one woman on March 22, state media reported, after Israel threatened a severe response to rockets it said had been fired from Lebanon. — AFP pic
Lebanon strikes
Pope Francis called for an immediate end to the Israeli strikes and for the resumption of dialogue for the release of hostages and to secure a “definitive ceasefire”.
According to the Gaza health ministry, at least 637 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli assault since Tuesday.
The escalation in Gaza has coincided with waves of Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.
Israel’s military yesterday said it had “attacked and eliminated” a Hezbollah member “in the area of Aita al-Shaab”, southern Lebanon.
The strike came a day after the most intense escalation since a November ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war. Lebanon’s health ministry said seven people were killed on Saturday.
Israel said it attacked in response to rocket fire, which Iran-backed Hezbollah — an ally of Hamas — denied responsibility for.
Since Tuesday, Hamas has fired rockets and Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched missiles at Israel.
Early yesterday, Israel said it had intercepted another missile from Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthis say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians.
Resumption of the fighting in Gaza has coincided with a reignited protest movement in Israel, against Netanyahu’s policies generally as well as against the war.
Demonstrators yesterday scuffled with police outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, AFP images showed. — AFP
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