Israeli troops have regained control of 29 places inside Israel that were taken yesterday by Hamas, but fighting against militants of this group continues in eight points, confirmed Israeli Army spokesman Richard Hecht.
Among the places where clashes continue, the cities of Sderot and Beeri stand out, where the situation in terms of victims is critical, as well as the military base in the southern district of the Central Command.
In these places, Israel has rescued Israelis who were held hostage by Hamas in the liberated areas, although it has not provided figures; while fifty people, “soldiers, but also civilians, including children and grandparents,” remain kidnapped by the group inside Gaza, Hecht said.
Hostages in the Beeri and Ofakim kibbutzim were rescued overnight by security forces, and a police station in Sderot, which had been overrun by Hamas, was also cleared overnight, with 10 gunmen killed, according to reports. authorities.
The spokesman has also reported that the Army is going to evacuate all Israeli communities adjacent to Gaza “for security”, which suggests that a larger-scale attack on the Strip is still expected, which Israel has bombed by air repeatedly and with intensity during the night. “We have not yet cleared the entire area. There may still be terrorists,” he said.
Hecht has also indicated that they are going to begin to evacuate some Palestinian communities within Gaza, so that they can move to other points in the strip and be able to continue dismantling Hamas infrastructure, although he clarified that it will not be a humanitarian corridor to remove the population from the Gaza Strip. enclave, but displacements within that territory.
According to official data, Israeli aviation attacked 426 Hamas targets overnight, including military bases, weapons warehouses, rocket launchers and tunnels. “The air attack is still underway. It is going to take time,” he said about the duration of this war, regarding which “a ground incursion into Gaza” has not been ruled out, although he clarified that now is not yet the time because there are no the conditions.
On another front, the Lebanese Shiite group Hizbullah has claimed responsibility for an attack with mortar shells and guided missiles against three positions in Israeli territory, in the first action from Lebanon in the war between Israel and the Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip.
“Groups of martyr Commander Imad Mughniyeh attacked three positions of the Zionist occupation in the Chebaa Farms (controlled by Israel but disputed by Lebanon and Syria). The attack targeted the positions of Radar, Zeyden and Ruisat al Alam with a large number of projectiles and guided missiles,” according to a statement broadcast by Al Manar television, which acts as Hezbollah’s mouthpiece.
Israel, for its part, has responded with artillery in the area of ??southern Lebanon after a “shootout” was reported, according to the Israeli Army, in an area that is in a state of maximum alert. The two nations are separated by the so-called Blue Line, a kind of temporary de facto border established by the UN in 2000 to mark the withdrawal line at the departure of the Israeli troops that had occupied southern Lebanon until that moment.
In the midst of the Shabbat break and the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the war caught Israel off guard. The multiple and coordinated attacks by the Gaza militias, with thousands of rockets, the infiltration of their fighters and the kidnapping of Israeli civilians and soldiers, were not only unexpected and unprecedented, but have left the Jewish state and intelligence battered. and in evidence within its territory, and even in Gaza, where it always has its eyes.
Both, Israel and the Palestinian militias, are thus in an open war that has accumulated hundreds of deaths (more than 200 on the Israeli side and 232 on the Palestinian side, according to a latest report last night), after the armed groups – with Hamas at the head – will begin on Saturday a coordinated offensive by land, air and even sea.
The attacks have drawn widespread condemnation from the international community. The tragedy occurs in the midst of Washington’s commitment to promoting diplomatic normalization between the Government of Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia, a relationship described as an anti-Iran clamp, where there was celebration yesterday. Aggression has every potential to derail this plan.
