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The Israeli military sent troops into Gaza for “extensive ground operations” on Sunday after air strikes pummeled the enclave for a fifth day, killing nearly 100 Palestinians overnight.
The deployment of troops — the first stages of a potentially much bigger invasion of the besieged enclave — came even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to continue engaging in negotiations to end the war with Hamas.
Israel’s military did not say how many troops were deployed inside Gaza but described it as “a broad ground operation throughout the northern and southern Gaza Strip” as part of what it called “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”. Its air forces carried out 670 strikes in recent days, a tempo that matches the early weeks of the 19-month war against Hamas.
The new offensive, which began on Tuesday with the attempted assassination of Hamas’s Gaza chief, has been authorised by Netanyahu’s far-right security cabinet to occupy most of the enclave and force its 2.1mn civilians into about a tenth of the territory near the Egypt border.
But Netanyahu has also cast the military operations as part of a new tactic of “negotiations under fire”, which threatens Hamas with permanent loss of territory unless the militant group yields to the pressure by releasing Israeli hostages without a permanent truce.
“Even at this time, the negotiating team in Doha is working to exhaust every chance of a deal — whether according to [a US] proposal or within the framework of ending the fighting, which would include the release of all hostages, the exile of Hamas terrorists, and the demilitarisation of the strip,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Sunday morning.
The Israeli military has killed hundreds of Palestinians since launching Operation Gideon’s Chariots this week, including at least 350 in the past three days, according to local health officials. By noon on Sunday, the bodies of 96 people were brought to Gaza’s few functioning hospitals, according to a preliminary count by the health ministry.
It has also blocked food, medicine and fresh water from entering Gaza for more than two and a half months. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are already starving, a UN panel said earlier this week.
Israel has yet to confirm whether its strikes on the European Hospital on Tuesday killed the intended target Mohammad Sinwar, who took over the reins of the militant group after Israel killed his brother Yahya Sinwar, the longtime Hamas leader who orchestrated the October 7 cross-border raids.
But two Saudi news outlets on Sunday reported that Sinwar had been killed in the strike. Defence minister Israel Katz had similarly briefed local officials, Israeli media reported. Sinwar’s other brother, a professor at a local university, was also killed overnight, according to a death notice shared in Gaza.
Israel stepped up the intensity of its air strikes earlier this week as US President Donald Trump wrapped up his Gulf tour.
Israeli officials had earlier referred to his trip as a “window of opportunity” to broker a swap of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners that would be acceptable to Netanyahu and his far-right allies. In the event, Trump negotiated the release of a single Israeli soldier, who is also an American national.
An estimated 20 hostages and the bodies of as many as 38 more are still being held by Hamas, which has refused to release them without a complete ceasefire and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces.
More than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, most of them women and children, according to local health officials.
At least 1,200 people were killed in Israel in Hamas’s cross-border attack on October 7 2023 and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
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