Intense Israeli strikes rocked the northern Gaza Strip on Friday evening. (File)
Israel launched massive strikes across northern Gaza, which reports said were the most intense since the start of the war on October 7. Hamas said internet has been snapped in the Gaza Strip. Reports said contact with Gaza is lost.
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The Israeli military said it had increased its strikes on Gaza "in a very significant way", as news agency AFP live footage captured intense bombardment of the territory's north. "We will continue to strike in Gaza City and around," military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised address.
The Hamas government said Israel "cut communications and most of the internet" across the Gaza Strip today. The government's media office accused Israel of taking the measure "to perpetrate massacres with bloody retaliatory strikes from the air, land and sea," as heavy strikes hit northern Gaza.
Rocket warning sirens blared in several cities in Israel while the airstrikes in northern Gaza were going on. Central Tel Aviv was targetted in the rocket attacks today.
Hamas said today it had fired "salvos" of rockets at Israel after intense Israeli bombing of the Palestinian territory. "Salvos of rockets in the direction of the occupied territories (Israel) in answer to the massacre of civilians," Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on its Telegram channel.
The UN chief warned today that Gaza faces "an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering" due to lack of food, water and power. "I repeat my call for a humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the delivery of life-saving supplies," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
The Israeli army accused Hamas of abusing hospitals in the Gaza Strip for military purposes. The allegation was swiftly denied by Hamas, and the main United Nations agency working in Gaza said earlier it had mechanisms in place to prevent aid being diverted.
"Hamas wages war from hospitals" in Gaza, military spokesman Daniel Hagari told journalists, adding that Hamas was also using fuel stored in hospitals to help carry out its operations.
Mr Hagari specifically identified Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, as one from which Hamas men were operating. "Terrorists move freely" in Shifa and other hospitals, he said.
"Hamas-ISIS is sick. They turn hospitals into headquarters for their terror. We just released intelligence proving it," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, showing a video claiming how Hamas has been using Gaza's largest hospital for military purpose.
A senior member of the Hamas political bureau, Izzat al-Rishq, swiftly fired back at the allegations from the Israeli army, calling them unfounded. "There's no basis in truth in what the spokesman of the enemy army stated," Mr Rishq said, accusing Israel of making up the allegations to "pave the way for a new massacre to be committed against our people".
With inputs from AFP
