Israel stepping up ground operations in Gaza Strip

Israeli air and ground forces are stepping up operations in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s chief military spokesperson said on Friday, amid reports of heavy bombing of the besieged enclave, Reuters reports.

Internet and mobile phone services were cut off in the Palestinian Territory, a local telecoms firm and the Red Crescent said.

“In the last hours, we intensified the attacks in Gaza,” Rear Admiral, Daniel Hagari, told a televised news briefing, raising expectations that the long-anticipated ground invasion of Gaza may be beginning.

He said the air force was conducting extensive strikes on tunnels and other infrastructure.

“In addition to the attacks carried out in the last few days, ground forces are expanding their operations tonight,” he said.

Israeli forces have massed outside Gaza, where Israel has been conducting an intense campaign of aerial bombardment since a deadly 7 October attack on Israel by the Hamas Movement.

Earlier on Friday, Palestinian mobile phone service provider, Jawwal, said that services including phone and internet had been cut by heavy bombardment.

READ: Internet services in Gaza cut off, says Palestinian telecom provider

A statement from the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had completely lost contact with its operations room in Gaza and all its teams operating on the ground.

Israel has said it has been preparing a ground invasion, but has been urged by the US and Arab countries to delay an operation that would multiply the number of civilian casualties in the densely populated coastal strip and might ignite a wider conflict.

A ground invasion would markedly escalate Israel’s campaign of retribution for the deadly Hamas attack of 7 October.

Such an operation would exacerbate what aid groups call a humanitarian crisis in Gaza; following days of aerial bombardment that health authorities say have killed more than 7,000 Palestinians that followed a shock attack by hundreds of Hamas gunmen, who rampaged through Israeli communities close to the Gaza Strip, killing 1,400 people and dragging more than 200 into captivity.

Concerns about a risk of a wider Middle East conflict have risen in recent days, with the US dispatching more military assets to the region as Israel pummelled targets in Gaza and Hamas supporters in Lebanon and Syria.

Israeli leaders have vowed to wipe out Hamas, the Movement that has run Gaza since 2007, and kill the leaders and planners of the 7 October, undeterred by pleas from humanitarian agencies to spare the civilian population.

Much of the infrastructure of Gaza, which has been living under blockade by Israel and Egypt since 2007, has been shattered by the Israeli bombing.

Power has been cut for days, crippling treatment facilities and depriving Gazans of fresh water, while half of its housing stock has been damaged and 20,000 residential units destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, according to the media office.

With Israel keeping up daily bombardments that laid waste to swathes of the densely populated Strip, Palestinians said they received renewed Israeli military warnings to move from Gaza’s north to the south to avoid the deadliest theatre of the war.

Gazans say making the journey south remains highly risky amid air strikes and that southern areas have also been bombed.

READ: 250 UK lawyers: Int’l law being breached in Gaza, UK must call for ceasefire

Many families have refused to leave their homes, fearing a repeat of the experience of previous wars with Israel, when Palestinians who left their homes and land were never able to return.

Strategically, Gaza operations may be complicated by the need to protect Israel’s northern border where Israeli forces have been engaged in days of sporadic cross-border fire into southern Lebanon and Syria.

Israel and its ally, the United States, have warned the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon not to intervene and Washington has dispatched two aircraft carriers to the region to reinforce the message.

READ: Prayers, protests in Jerusalem and West Bank as Gaza war rages