CNN
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The Israeli military said Wednesday that it had launched “targeted ground activities” in Gaza, partially recapturing a key area in the territory, a day after launching an aerial bombardment of the Strip that shattered the two-month-old ceasefire with Hamas.
The operation followed Israel’s renewed bombardment of Gaza the day before, shattering the fragile ceasefire with Hamas. Israel accused Hamas of “repeatedly” refusing to release hostages and rejecting offers from mediators. Hamas, in turn, blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of unilaterally upending the truce and putting hostages “at risk of an unknown fate.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Wednesday that its troops “began targeted ground activities in the central and southern Gaza Strip in order to expand the security zone and to create a partial buffer between northern and southern Gaza.”
“As part of the ground activities, the troops expanded their control further to the center of the Netzarim Corridor,” the military said.
Under January’s ceasefire deal, Israel had withdrawn from the Netzarim Corridor, a key strip of land that splits Gaza in half, dividing the central Gaza City and northern Gaza from the southern parts of the Strip that borders Egypt.
Although Israel withdrew from the corridor, foreign military contractors have continued to man checkpoints between northern and southern Gaza.
After the truce became effective, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians filed through the corridor by foot, car and in some cases by donkeys, with many of them returning to homes that had been destroyed after 15 months of Israeli bombardment.
The renewed ground offensive came after Israel pounded Gaza with airstrikes overnight into Tuesday, killing more than 400 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, in one of the war’s deadliest days.
On Wednesday, the United Nations said one of their aid workers was killed by an “explosive ordnance” at the UN guesthouse in central Gaza, and five others were injured.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza blamed the attack on the Israeli military, which the IDF denied, saying it had not conducted an airstrike in the vicinity of the guesthouse.
Meanwhile, the renewed war drew thousands of protesters to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem. Critics of Netanyahu’s government accuse the prime minister of using the war to shore up his shaky coalition.
The Israeli military statement came after Defense Minister Israel Katz warned on Wednesday that the residents of Gaza will “pay the full price” if Israeli hostages are not returned and Hamas remains able to govern in the Strip.
An Israeli official said Tuesday that the airstrikes in Gaza were the first phase in a series of escalatory military actions aimed at pressuring Hamas into releasing more hostages, marking a return to Netanyahu’s view that military pressure is the most effective way to secure the release of hostages.
So far, the Israeli military has brought just eight living hostages back to Israel, out of 251 taken by Hamas and its allies on October 7, 2023. The vast majority have been released as part of ceasefire deals in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
