By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) -The Israeli military said on Wednesday its forces have resumed ground operations in the central and southern Gaza Strip, as a second day of airstrikes killed at least 20 Palestinians, according to local health workers.
The operations have extended Israel’s control over the Netzarim Corridor, which bisects Gaza, and were a “focused” manoeuvre aimed at creating a partial buffer zone between the north and the south of the enclave, the military said.
The renewed ground operations come a day after more than
400 Palestinians were killed in airstrikes in one of the deadliest days since the beginning of the conflict, shattering a ceasefire has largely held since January.
The United Nations said an Israeli airstrike had killed a foreign staffer and wounded five workers at the site of a U.N. headquarters in central Gaza City on Wednesday. But Israel denied the claim, saying it had hit a Hamas site, where it had detected preparations for firing into Israeli territory.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the U.N. office for Project Services, said: “Israel knew that this was a U.N. premises, that people were living, staying and working there, it is a compound. It is a very well-known place.”
Israel said its onslaught was “just the beginning”.
Israel and Hamas accuse each other of breaching the truce, which had offered a respite for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents after 17 months of war that has reduced the enclave to rubble and forced most of its population to evacuate multiple times.
The Israeli campaign has killed more than 49,000 people in Gaza, Palestinian health authorities say, and caused a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food, fuel and water.
Israel has accused Hamas of using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas denies this and accuses Israel of indiscriminate bombings.
The war – the most devastating episode in decades of Israel- Palestinian conflict – was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which gunmen killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo. Additional reporting by Jana Choukeir in Dubai, Lili Bayer in Brussels, Rachel More in Berlin and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Angus MacSwan)
