Israel Begins Ground Operations in Southern Gaza

On the third day of fighting after the end of the truce that allowed for the exchange of hostages, the Israeli army began to expand its operations into southern Gaza, an area that had not yet been reached by land. Although the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners was successful, Israeli forces blamed Hamas for its end and said the group did not comply with the terms of the agreement. Since then, two days of intense attacks have followed, in which hundreds of victims have been killed, and in the third, the army began its expansion into southern Gaza.” We fought hard and exhaustively in the north of the Gaza Strip and now we are fighting in the south,” said Herzi Halevi, chief of the army general staff.According to Ashraf al-Qidreh, spokesman for the Gazan Ministry of Health, more than 15,000 victims have been killed so far in the conflict that erupted on October 7 with the surprise attack by Hamas. Following the attacks in Gaza in recent days followed by new civilian mobilizations to the south, Volker Turk, the UN commissioner for human rights, remarked that “there is no longer a safe place in the Strip.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said that, since the beginning of the war, they have discovered more than 800 entrances to Hamas’ tunnel network in Gaza, and destroyed at least 500 of them so far. This is where the group relies to gain a foothold in the Gaza Strip area, and uses the network of tunnels for smuggling, secret operations and storage. Earlier on Sunday, the IDF reported that several of its soldiers received “minor injuries” after being hit by an anti-tank missile while patrolling the Beit Hillel area, and later reported that they identified missile launches from Har Dov — an area disputed between Lebanon and Syria and currently controlled by Israel. From its place, Hezbollah said it attacked different places “in support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.”

Original source in Spanish