LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
- Hezbollah says it shot down an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon with surface-to-air missile
- U.S. President Joe Biden urges Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protect civilians, increase humanitarian aid to Gaza as international outcry increases for a humanitarian pause to allow aid into Gaza.
- International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan said blocking relief for innocent civilians in Gaza could constitute a crime and urged Israel to cooperate
- IDF spokesperson again urges residents away from Hamas strongholds, saying “our fight is with Hamas, not the people of Gaza.”
- Israeli fighter jets strike about 450 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip over past 24 hours, the IDF says.
- UNRWA confirms internet connections partially restored in Gaza after communications blackout stalled aid convoys.
The Israel military intensified its ground operation and its military strikes against Hamas militants in Gaza on Sunday. Hamas also reported heavy fighting in northwest Gaza.
Israel published pictures of its tanks on the Palestinian enclave's western coast 48 hours after ordering expanded ground incursions across its eastern border. Hamas said it hit Israeli tanks in north Gaza with missiles and scoffed at reports that Israeli troops had advanced deep into Gaza. Neither report could be independently verified.
The Israeli military again Sunday issued an urgent call to Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip to evacuate southward temporarily, away from the epicenter of the war against Hamas.
"Relocating southward is for their personal safety," chief spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sunday.
"We are today emphasizing that this is an urgent call," he said in a televised briefing. He also reported that the number of people confirmed held hostage in Gaza since Hamas' October 7 cross-border onslaught in southern Israel was now 239.
Israel also reported that its ground forces killed a number of Hamas militants as they exited a tunnel near the Erez crossing, the sole pedestrian passageway from Gaza into Israel before it was destroyed in the recent fighting.
Hamas has a sprawling network of tunnels underneath Gaza where it is believed to be stockpiling weapons, food and other supplies.
The Israel Defense Forces said early Sunday that its fighter jets struck 450 Hamas targets in Gaza over the past 24 hours, including strikes near Shifa Hospital, one of Gaza’s largest, which is packed with patients and those seeking shelter.
“Hamas terrorists operate inside and under civilian buildings, precisely because they know the IDF distinguishes between terrorists and civilians,” IDF spokesman Hagari said in a video posted early Sunday to X, formerly Twitter.
Israel declared war on Hamas after the militant group carried out a terror attack on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 200 hostages. Since then, the Palestinian death toll has passed 8,000, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says.
Clashes on the Israel-Lebanon border escalated Sunday with Hezbollah saying it shot down an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon with a surface-to-air missile.
The drone was hit near Khiam, about 5 kilometers from the border with Israel, and was seen falling in Israeli territory, Hezbollah added. Two security sources in Lebanon said it was the first time Hezbollah had announced downing an Israeli drone.
Israel Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Hamas and Hezbollah are U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
Watch related video by Veronica Balderas Iglesias:
Civilians, humanitarian aid
President Joe Biden spoke Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorism. But he also underscored the need to prioritize the protection of civilians.
The two discussed efforts to protect the hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7, and Biden emphasized "the need to immediately and significantly increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of civilians in Gaza" as supplies dwindle there, the White House said.
Biden also spoke with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to thank him for Egypt’s role in delivering humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. They agreed to accelerate the aid flow as well as the need to protect civilian lives, and that Palestinians not be displaced to Egypt or elsewhere.
The two agreed to work together to set the conditions for a durable and sustainable peace in the Middle East to include the establishment of a Palestinian state, the White House reports.
Internet and aid delivery
Internet and phone connectivity were restored for many people on Sunday after this weekend’s bombardment knocked out most communications in the territory late Friday, largely cutting off the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people from the world.
Almost three dozen aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, the largest aid convoy since the war between Israel and Hamas began.
Israel will allow more aid into Gaza in coming days, Colonel Elad Goren of Cogat, the Israeli Defense Ministry agency that coordinates with the Palestinians.
In what it described Sunday as “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down,” an official of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said thousands of people broke into its Gaza aid warehouses to take food and other basic survival items.
The crowds broke into four facilities on Saturday, UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said. One warehouse held 80 tons of food, the U.N. World Food Program said. It would take at least 40 of its trucks to cross into Gaza daily just to meet growing food needs, WFP said.
Speaking to reporters Sunday in Kathmandu, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his appeal for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the delivery of a sustained humanitarian relief at a scale that meets the needs of the people of Gaza.”
International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan visited the Rafah crossing where he said blocking relief for innocent civilians could constitute a crime and urged Israel to cooperate.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
