Israeli strikes intensified across Gaza today, with some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, pounding the north, where the Israeli army had earlier withdrawn, local residents said.
Aerial shelling and tank strikes were also reported in areas of central and southern Gaza, with residents speaking of incessant pounding.
Overnight, tanks again entered eastern Beit Hanoun, on the enclave’s northern edge, but did not penetrate deep into the city, residents and Hamas said. The fire even reached some schools, causing panic among the displaced people who have taken refuge in them.
In Israel, where public services and businesses were closed for the Passover holiday, alarm sirens sounded warning of an imminent rocket attack on southern border towns, but no casualties were reported. The armed wing of Islamic Jihad, a group affiliated with Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attacks in the towns of Sderot and Nir Am, suggesting it is still capable of firing rockets after nearly 200 days of war and after much of the city was flattened. of the Palestinian enclave and displaced almost all the inhabitants, 2.3 million people.
Thick, black smoke rose in northern Gaza from the border with southern Israel. The shelling was heavy in eastern Beit Hanoun and Jabalia and continued today in areas such as Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s oldest suburbs, where residents said at least 10 hits hit the main road in a matter of seconds.
“It was one of those nights of terror we lived through at the beginning of the war. The shelling from the tanks and planes didn’t stop,” said Umm Mohammad, 53, a mother of six who lives 700 meters from Zeitoun. “I gathered my children and my sisters who came to shelter in my house and we prayed for our lives while the house was shaking,” he added.
West of Beit Hanoun, in Beit Lahiya, a mosque was hit, killing a boy and injuring many others. A paramedic was killed in a shelling near the city’s stadium, according to his colleagues.
In another blow to Beit Lahiya, crowds gathered on the beach road to collect aid packages dropped from planes were hit. Reuters was unable to confirm those targets or determine whether there were any casualties.
In Khan Yunis, one day after the tanks entered, the shelling continued. In central Gaza, four dead were recovered from a house hit overnight in the Al Nuseirat refugee camp.
The Israeli military said the rockets fired overnight into Israeli territory came from northern Gaza. It claimed it carried out “targeted precision strikes” against rocket launchers and killed many militants. In his statement, he specified that warplanes hit “about 25 terrorist targets” across the Gaza Strip and that among them were “military infrastructure, observation posts, terrorists, launch sites.”
