Summary
- Israel’s military says encirclement of Gaza City” and has been attacking outposts, headquarters and other Hamas infrastructures
- The UN says four schools-turned-shelters in the Gaza Strip have been damaged in the past 24 hours
- The UN’s agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, says 20 people are reportedly dead at a school in the Jabalia refugee camp
- Schools at the Beach refugee camp, and the Al Bureij camp, were also damaged, with three reported deaths
- Israel has carried out thousands of strikes on Gaza since 7 October – the UN did not attribute blame for the damaged schools, but called for a ceasefire
- Israel began its operation after Hamas killed more than 1,400 people in Israel and kidnapped more than 200 others
- Israel’s military says it’s targeting Hamas infrastructure, including tunnels and rocket launchers, and is minimising civilian deaths
- The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 9,000 people have been killed in the Strip since 7 October.
Israel’s military said it has “completed the encirclement of Gaza City” and has been attacking positions used by Hamas. The city is the largest in the Gaza Strip and was the most densely populated part of the territory before the war began.
Earlier, the Israeli military said its forces had encircled Gaza City, the largest part of the Gaza Strip.
Before the war began, it was the largest most densely populated part of the strip.
Home to an estimated 775,000 people, it had more than 9,000 people per square kilometer – almost double that of the rest of the Gaza Strip, an already densely-packed area.
However, many of those have now left – although it’s not clear how many – after the Israeli military ordered citizens of northern Gaza to move south in the middle of last month, days after the 7 October Hamas attacks.
The Israeli military has described Gaza City as the “focus” of Hamas’s activities.
Source: The BBC
