Israel says ground forces operating

across Gaza Strip

GAZA/CAIRO: The Israeli military said its ground forces were active across
the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces bombed swathes of the besieged enclave on
Sunday (Dec 3), killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, as civilians
sought shelter in a shrinking area of the south.

The militant group Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops about
2km from the southern city of Khan Younis. Residents, many of whom had
moved there to flee earlier attacks in the conflict, said they could hear tank fire
and feared a new Israeli ground offensive was building.

The Israeli military earlier ordered people to evacuate some areas in and near
the city, but made no announcement of any new southern ground assault.

"The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) continues to extend its ground operation
against Hamas centres in all of the Gaza Strip," spokesperson Rear Admiral
Daniel Hagari told reporters in Tel Aviv in the clearest sign its planned ground
offensive in the south had begun. "The forces are coming face-to-face with
terrorists and killing them."

Fuelling fears the conflict could spread to destabilise the region, Yemen's
Iran-allied Houthi movement said it attacked two Israeli ships in the Red Sea
with an armed drone and a missile on Sunday, in a move to stand with the
Palestinians.

The Pentagon also said it was aware of reports of an attack on an American

warship, the USS Carney, without going into detail.
An Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the two ships
had no connection to Israel.

The Jabalia refugee camp in the north of Hamas-ruled Gaza was among the
sites reported hit from the air. A Gazan health ministry spokesperson said
several people were killed by an Israeli air strike.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed a boy covered in grey dust, sitting

weeping amid crumbled cement and rubble from collapsed buildings.

"My father was martyred," he cried in a hoarse voice. A girl in a pink

sweatshirt, also coated with dust, stood between piles of rubble.

Bombardments from war planes and artillery were also concentrated on Khan
Younis and Rafah, another city in Gaza's south, residents said, and hospitals
were struggling to cope with the flow of wounded.

Israel's government spokesperson, Eylon Levy, said the military had struck
more than 400 targets over the weekend "including extensive aerial attacks in
the Khan Younis area" and had also killed Hamas militants and destroyed
their infrastructure in Beit Lahiya in the north.

There was no immediate comment on the reports of specific attacks.

The renewed warfare followed the end on Friday of a seven-day pause in the
fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants which had allowed an
exchange of 105 hostages held by Hamas, most of them Israelis, for 240
Palestinian prisoners.

The latest violence took place despite calls from the United States, Israel's
closest ally, for Israel to limit harm to Palestinian civilians in the new phase of
its offensive, focused on the south.
More than 15,523 people have been killed, according to Gaza's health
ministry, in nearly two months of warfare that broke out after a Hamas
cross-border raid on southern Israel on Oct 7 in which 1,200 Israelis were
killed and around 240 taken hostage. Israel says Hamas continues to hold
136 hostages.

Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas. The Iranian-backed group is sworn to

Israel's destruction. The initial Hamas attack and the ensuing war amount to
the bloodiest episode in the decades-old wider Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Osama Hamdan, a Lebanon-based Hamas official, accused Israel of pursuing

a deliberate strategy of urging Gazan civilians south in order to trap and kill
them there.

"It has become clear that the occupation's claim ... of the existence of safe
areas in the south of the Gaza Strip, and its constant call for citizens to go
there, was a premeditated plan and trap to commit more massacres against
unarmed civilians and displaced people in the south," he told reporters without
citing evidence. "There are no safe areas."

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment but
has consistently said it is targeting Hamas military strongholds and has asked
civilians to move to safe zones so they can get humanitarian aid.