Israeli military intensifies assault on Gaza City
Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that Israeli forces are stepping up bombardment of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain, and destroying residential buildings north of the city.
As we’ve been reporting, Israel is pushing ahead with an offensive to seize Gaza’s largest urban centre and force its residents to concentration zones in the south.
Hamas slams Trump’s ‘double standards’ on Israel’s Gaza City assault
The Palestinian group has issued a statement in response to Trump’s recent remarks, in which the US president warned Hamas against using Israeli captives as “human shields” to fend off Israel’s ground assault on Gaza City.
It said Trump’s comments “reflect a blatant bias toward Zionist propaganda and are a glaring example of double standards – ignoring the crime of ethnic cleansing and the martyrdom of nearly 65,000 innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, most of them women and children”.
Hamas also said that the US was fully aware that it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had sabotaged all efforts to reach a deal to free the captives and end the “brutal genocide” in Gaza.
“The fate of the occupation army’s prisoners in the Gaza Strip is determined by the government of the terrorist Netanyahu. The systematic destruction and fascist extermination campaign targeting Gaza City also directly endanger the lives of the captive Zionist soldiers,” it added.
As we reported earlier, the US president issued a threat on his Truth Social online platform, saying he has received reports that Hamas has moved Israeli captives above ground in Gaza to use them as “human shields”, and that this meant that “ALL ‘BETS’ ARE OFF”.
Israel launches offensive ‘to occupy Gaza City’: Report
Axios is reporting that Israel’s military has launched its ground assault “to occupy Gaza City” on Monday. The US outlet, citing Israeli officials, said the offensive started hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Netanyahu in Israel.
It said Rubio told Netanyahu that the Trump administration supports the ground operation but wants to see it implemented quickly and to end as soon as possible. “Rubio didn’t pull the breaks on the ground operation,” Axios quoted a senior Israeli official as saying.
It also cited a US official as saying that the Trump administration is not going to stop Israel. “It’s not Trump’s war, it’s Bibi’s war, and he will own whatever happens next,” the US official said.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency, meanwhile, reported that Israeli warplanes had launched nonstop raids on Gaza City on Monday night, alongside shelling from Israeli artillery and drones firing bullets and bombs.
As we’ve been reporting, Israeli forces have been intensifying strikes on Gaza City since the middle of August, starting with demolishing buildings in the neighbourhood of Zeitoun in the east and then moving to Sabra in the south, and now to areas in the north and west.
