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Israel ordered people in part of eastern Gaza City to evacuate on Thursday as Palestinian officials reported heavy strikes in the area and multiple casualties.
The Israeli military said that it could not immediately confirm the strikes, which Palestinian officials said had hit the Shajaiye neighborhood. Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that the military was conducting a ground operation there to root out Hamas based on intelligence that the armed group had begun to restore control in the neighborhood.
The operation, if confirmed, would be the latest instance of Israeli forces returning to parts of Gaza that they had previously left, especially in the north of the enclave, as Hamas regroups amid the anarchy that the nine-month war has unleashed.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported that intense strikes had targeted the Tunisian cemetery and that civilians had been killed.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense emergency service, said that rescuers had recovered seven bodies and dozens of injured people from the area. Civil Defense said that five homes had been struck in Shajaiye and another neighborhood, and that a search was underway for missing people.
The neighborhood, one of Gaza’s largest, is home to a battalion that is considered one of the strongest in Hamas’s military wing, though it is unclear how big a presence it still has there.
Shajaiye was the site of intense fighting earlier in the war. In December, nine soldiers were killed there on what the Israeli military reported was one of the deadliest days of the war for its forces. Israeli forces also razed part of the Tunisian cemetery to set up a temporary military position.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
— Hiba Yazbek reporting from Jerusalem
key developments
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The Syrian government said an airstrike targeted a Hezbollah stronghold in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, a Syrian state news agency, SANA, reported Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group, said three people were killed and more than 10 others were injured. The exact toll could not be independently confirmed. Syria blamed Israel for the strike. Israel’s military did not immediately comment, but it has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of assaults on Iran-linked targets in Syria.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday of planning to spread the war in Gaza to Lebanon “with the consent of the West,” in what he said would be a “grave disaster.” Mr. Netanyahu suggested on Sunday that fighting in Gaza was about to enter a less intense stage and that Israel would be able to move some of its forces north, where cross-border strikes have intensified with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. But he stopped well short of announcing plans to send troops into Lebanon. The U.N.’s departing humanitarian aid chief, Martin Griffiths, also warned on Wednesday of the dangers posed by a conflict in Lebanon, calling it a “flashpoint beyond all flashpoints.”
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Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, met with Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, on Wednesday to discuss developments in the war in Gaza, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon and other issues. During four days of meetings with U.S. officials in Washington, Mr. Gallant said, “we made significant progress, obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed,” noting that he and Mr. Sullivan spoke specifically about Israel’s weapons needs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has recently accused the United States of holding up weapons shipments, a claim that American officials have denied. Mr. Gallant struck a more conciliatory tone on Wednesday, saying, “It is moving to see the great support we receive from the U.S. government and the American public.”
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An Israeli soldier was killed and another was severely wounded overnight during a raid in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the military said on Thursday. It was the latest in a series of violent Israeli raids in the city.
The soldier who was killed, a sniper team commander, “fell during operational activity,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a brief statement, which gave few details. Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported that one Palestinian man had been wounded in the raid.
Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, houses a refugee camp founded more than 70 years ago for Palestinians displaced in the wars surrounding the creation of the state of Israel. The city and camp are bastions of armed resistance to the occupation. Israel has conducted frequent raids there over the years, but they have become more common since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel that prompted a war in Gaza.
The military detained 28 people during the overnight raid and nine remain in detention, including Jamal Hawail, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, according to a statement from the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, which is linked to the Palestinian Authority, and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, a nongovernmental organization. The council sets policy for Fatah, the political party that controls the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli statement did not comment on the arrests.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been detained in the raids, which Israeli officials say are part of counterterrorism operations against Hamas and an extension of the war.
The U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said this month that Israeli forces and settlers had killed more than 500 people in the West Bank since Oct. 7. In the same period, 24 Israelis, of whom eight were members of the security forces, were killed in the West Bank and in Israel in clashes or what Israel called attacks by Palestinians from the West Bank, Mr. Türk said.