AL HAYAT - Israel expands ground offensive in Gaza

Israel has pushed since the collapse of a short-lived truce in the war with Hamas to seize territory in Gaza in what it has called a strategy to force the militants to free hostages still in captivity.

Simultaneously, it has escalated attacks on Lebanon and Syria, with a strike in the south Lebanese city of Sidon killing a Hamas commander along with his adult son and daughter, according to the military.

In Gaza City, the Israeli military said ground troops had begun conducting operations in the Shejaiya area "in order to expand the security zone".

Defence Minister Israel Katz had said on Wednesday that Israel would bolster its military presence inside the Gaza Strip to "destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure".

The operation would "seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones", he said, without specifying how much territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was dividing Gaza and "seizing territory" to force Hamas to free the remaining Israeli hostages seized in the militant group's October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war.

On Thursday, Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 31 people, including children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a school serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinians.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that women and children were among the dead, while six people were still unaccounted for in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City.

"One of the missing was a pregnant woman who was expecting twins," he said.

The Israeli military said it had struck a "Hamas command and control centre in the area of Gaza City".

It was unclear whether it was the same attack that hit the school.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,523.

- Lebanon strike -

In Lebanon, Israel said it killed a Hamas commander in a strike on the port city of Sidon that also killed his adult son and daughter.

"Overnight, the (army and the domestic security agency Shin Bet) conducted a targeted strike in the Sidon area, eliminating the terrorist Hassan Farhat, commander of Hamas's western arena in Lebanon," the Israeli military said in a statement.

It alleged that Farhat had orchestrated multiple attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians during the hostilities that followed the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023.

They included rocket fire on the Israeli town of Safed on February 14, 2024 that killed an Israeli soldier, the military added.

An AFP correspondent saw the fourth-floor flat still on fire after the strike, which caused heavy damage to the apartment block and neighbouring buildings and sparked panic in the densely populated neighbourhood.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the strike as a "flagrant attack on Lebanese sovereignty" and a breach of the November 27 ceasefire in the war between militant group Hezbollah and Israel.

Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah spiralled into all-out conflict last September, and the group remains a target of Israeli air strikes despite the ceasefire.

Under the truce, Hezbollah is supposed to redeploy its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.

Israel is supposed to withdraw its forces across the UN-demarcated Blue Line, the de facto border, but has missed two deadlines to do so and continues to hold five positions it deems "strategic".

In Syria, it has conducted strikes on military targets across the country this week, defying a United Nations warning that such attacks "undermine efforts to build a new Syria" following president Bashar al-Assad's ouster in December.

N.Dossary--al-Hayat