The Israeli army told AFP on Friday that renewed fighting in Gaza’s northern town of Jabalia was ‘perhaps the fiercest’ in over seven months of war.
The army had said in early January that it had ‘completed the dismantling of Hamas’s military framework in the northern Gaza Strip’ and vowed to focus its war efforts on central and southern areas of the Palestinian territory.
But intense fighting resumed less than a week ago in Jabalia, the second-most populous town in northern Gaza.
‘Hamas was in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago,’ the Israeli army told AFP on Friday, four months after its spokesman Daniel Hagari claimed that militants were operating in the area only sporadically and ‘without commanders’.
The current fighting in Jabalia is ‘perhaps the fiercest we have encountered’ in this area since the start of the offensive in the Gaza Strip, the army said, adding that it was now operating in the town’s refugee camp.
Before the war, Jabalia was home to the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, with more than 100,000 people packed into 1.4 square kilometres, according to the UN.
The army said it had killed around 200 militants since the resumption of fighting in Jabalia on Sunday.
Images provided by the Israeli army showed soldiers moving through a maze of heavily damaged and deserted buildings.
Intense fighting, accompanied by shelling, also resumed at the beginning of May in the Zeitun neighbourhood in the southwest of Gaza City, also in the north of the Palestinian territory.
Until recently, Israel claimed that the last four Hamas battalions were hiding out in Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.
On May 7, the Israeli army sent tanks and troops into eastern Rafah, vowing to wipe out the militant group.
According to Israeli military sources quoted in several media outlets, Hamas had about 30,000 fighters in the Gaza Strip, divided into 24 battalions before October 7.
More than 35,303 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out, according to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza.
The Israeli army said Friday that troops had recovered the bodies of three hostages in the war-torn Gaza Strip who had been ‘murdered’ by their captors.
‘Last night, the Israel Defence Forces (army) rescued the bodies of our hostages Shani Louk, Amit Buskila and Itzhak Gelerenter, who were taken hostage during the Hamas massacre on October 7 and murdered,’ military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised address.
The US military said aid deliveries began Friday via a temporary pier in Gaza aimed at ramping up emergency humanitarian assistance to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
‘Today at approximately 9 a.m. (Gaza time), trucks carrying humanitarian assistance began moving ashore via a temporary pier in Gaza,’ the US Central Command said in a statement, adding that no US troops went ashore.
‘This is an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor that is entirely humanitarian in nature,’ it said.
The pier was successfully anchored on Thursday, with around 500 tonnes of aid expected to enter the Palestinian territory in the coming days.
Photos released on Thursday by CENTCOM showed humanitarian aid being lifted onto a barge in the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod.
The Palestinian territory is facing famine after an Israeli siege brought dire shortages of food as well as safe water, medicines and fuel for its 2.4 million people.
The arrival of occasional aid convoys has slowed to a trickle since Israeli forces took control last week of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing.
The UN has said that opening up land crossing points and allowing more trucks convoys into Gaza is the only way to stem the spiralling humanitarian crisis.
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s devastating military retaliation has killed at least 35,272 people, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.