Israel expanding ground operations in Gaza, as IDF claims Hamas aerial chief killed

Published

2 years ago

October 28, 2023

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The Israeli military has said it is expanding ground operations and warned residents of Gaza City to move south.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), said late on Friday: “In addition to the attacks that we carried out in recent days, ground forces are expanding their activity this evening.

“The IDF is acting with great force… to achieve the objectives of the war.”

Overnight Israeli fighter jets hit 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip, the IDF said on Saturday.

This included “terror tunnels, underground combat spaces and additional underground infrastructure” and resulted in the deaths of several Hamas members, it added.

Israel-Gaza latest: Israel to expand ground operations in Gaza; civilians warned to move south

Hamas has said its fighters were clashing with Israeli troops in Gaza’s northeastern town of Beit Hanoun and in the central area of al Bureij.

“The al Qassam brigades and all the Palestinian resistance forces are completely ready to confront (Israel’s) aggression with full force and frustrate its incursions,” Hamas said in a statement early on Saturday.

“Netanyahu and his defeated army will not be able to achieve any military victory.”

The Israeli military also said it has killed the head of Hamas’ aerial wing, who had helped plan the 7 October attack and was responsible for the paragliders who flew across the border.

The IDF’s announcement comes after it said it had carried out more raids into Gaza – including a naval operation.

The IDF said troops had used vessels to attack “Hamas military infrastructure”, with support from aircraft, along the coast in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday night.

Officials released footage of what they said was the raid, but did not go into further details.

The video showed explosions near the sea and soldiers firing their weapons in the dark.

However, Hamas disputed the IDF’s version of events in a statement and said its forces had repelled the raiders, Israeli media reported.

Israeli forces also said they carried out a separate ground raid on the outskirts of Gaza City on Thursday night, as part of a second wave of recent incursions into the territory.

Israel has amassed hundreds of thousands of troops along the border with Gaza ahead of an expected ground offensive.

However, according to Sky News’s military analyst, Sean Bell, any offensive is likely to start with moving tanks and armoured vehicles across the border.

“There are lots of phases military operations go to, to gradually ramp up and de-risk the ultimate invasion,” he said.

“And we’ve seen that over the last few nights – an increase in the bombing campaign, what the IDF calls raids – all of this is testing Hamas’s defences and what threats will face the IDF as they get closer to mounting the offensive.

“The first phase of that is likely to be an armoured push over the border, probably to encircle the city of Gaza.

“But the challenge is the IDF doing an urban battle on foot – clearing Gaza City and worse the tunnels. I think that will be an extremely dangerous undertaking.”

Ground invasion seems imminent – but Israel won’t announce it before it does

Deborah Haynes

Security and Defence Editor

@haynesdeborah

Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza seems imminent.

An announcement on Friday evening by the military that it would be expanding its raids into the territory followed what appeared to be a significant ramping up of an already unprecedented barrage of airstrikes against the Palestinian enclave during the day.

The night sky over Gaza flashed orange and the boom of explosives impacting could be heard loudly from the Israeli town of Ashkelon, around eight miles away.

The language used by Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israel Defence Forces spokesman, to describe what was planned, stopped short of declaring this to be the moment of the full ground invasion.

But Israel is not going to announce such a move before it has begun, hoping to maintain some element of surprise.

Commanders have also said that this war against Hamas would be conducted differently to previous conflicts – though it has not specified how. It makes it hard to predict what will come next.

Israel is under pressure to delay the invasion while more time is given to negotiate the release of more than 220 hostages taken captive by Hamas.

There are also significant concerns about the risk of a widening of the war against Hamas triggering an escalation into a regional conflict.

But the huge military build-up along Israel’s border with Gaza points to a clear intent by political and military leaders to push forward with their plans to invade.

Meanwhile, Ayman Safadi, the foreign minister of Israel’s neighbour Jordan, on Friday accused Israel of “launching a ground war on Gaza”.

“[The] outcome will be a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions for years to come,” he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He called on the UN General Assembly to support a resolution, put forward by Jordan on behalf of Arab nations, calling for a humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The resolution by the 193-strong world body was approved on Friday – despite Israel and the US both voting against it and the UK abstaining.

However, it does not force any action on either Israel or Hamas.

Israel accuses Hamas of launching attacks from Gaza hospitals

At an earlier briefing, Rear Admiral Hagari accused Hamas of launching attacks from hospitals in Gaza.

He claimed the Israeli authorities had “concrete evidence” that hundreds of Hamas fighters who took part in the 7 October terrorist atrocity in southern Israel afterwards “flooded” into Shifa hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip.

“Right now, terrorists move freely in Shifa hospital and other hospitals in Gaza,” the spokesperson said.

“Hamas’s use of hospitals is systematic… When medical facilities are used for terror purposes, they are liable to lose their protection from attack in accordance with international law.

“The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will continue making efforts to minimise harm to the civilian population and will continue to act in accordance with international law.”

It was not immediately possible to independently verify the claims.

Another IDF spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, was asked by Sky News if the briefing was to soften the ground for the Israeli military to begin strikes on hospitals.

Asked if hospitals would no longer be afforded protection under international law, he said: “If these actions continue from hospitals, under certain conditions, hospitals could indeed lose the protections that they are entitled to.

“They (Hamas) have to leave hospitals, they have to let people leave hospitals, they can’t tell them to say and hold them hostage in hospitals.”

However, a doctor from north London, who is currently working in Gaza, claimed the Israeli briefing was an “outlandish excuse” to target hospitals.

Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah said: “At the end of the day, what they need to be reminded of, continuously, by everybody, and press included, is that the targeting of any hospital is a war crime, regardless of what outlandish excuses they might provide.”

However, Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said those in Gaza who speak out against Hamas can “face consequences”.

Speaking to Sky News, he said: “If that doctor knows, as we do, that Hamas has built a headquarters in the basement of his hospital, can he say so to Sky?

“Of course, he cannot.”

More than one million have fled their homes

According to Gaza authorities, more than 7,300 Palestinians have now been killed in waves of airstrikes by Israel in retaliation for a cross-border massacre carried out by Hamas in the south of the country on 7 October.

Officials said the dead include more than 3,000 children and over 1,500 women.

More than 1,400 people in Israel, mostly civilians, were killed during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government.

It also said Hamas is holding at least 229 captives inside Gaza, including women, children and the elderly.

The overall number of deaths far outstrips the combined total of all four previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas, estimated at around 4,000.

More than one million people in Gaza have fled their homes, with many following Israeli orders to evacuate to the south.

‘Humanitarian catastrophe is deepening’

It comes as six International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) trucks arrived in Gaza carrying medical and water purification supplies.

The ICRC’s Fabrizio Carboni said: “This crucial humanitarian assistance is a small dose of relief, but it’s not enough.

“This humanitarian catastrophe is deepening by the hour.”

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has warned remaining public services in Gaza are collapsing fast with fuel and food shortages.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said the international community “seems to have turned its back on Gaza.”

He also said Israel must allow more aid into Gaza amid a blockade he said is being used to “collectively punish more than two million people”.

Gaza’s sole power station shut down due to lack of fuel days after the start of the war, and Israel has barred all fuel deliveries, saying it believes Hamas would steal them for military purposes.

Internet and mobile phone services have also been cut off in the Gaza Strip, a local telecoms firm and the Red Crescent said.

World

Why do so many from around the world try to cross the English Channel?

Published

5 hours ago

July 9, 2025

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Why do so many from around the world try to cross the English Channel?

While the politicians talk, so many people come from around the world to try to get across the Channel on small boats. But why?

Why make such a perilous crossing to try to get to a country that seems to be getting increasingly hostile to asylum seekers?

As the British and French leaders meet, with small boats at the forefront of their agenda, we came to northern France to get some answers.

It is not a new question, but it is peppered with fresh relevance.

Over the course of a morning spent around a migrant camp in Dunkirk, we meet migrants from Gaza, Iraq, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sri Lanka and beyond.

Some are fearful, waving us away; some are happy to talk. Very few are comfortable to be filmed.

All but one man – who says he’s come to the wrong place and actually wants to claim asylum in Paris – are intent on reaching Britain.

They see the calm seas, feel the light winds – perfect conditions for small boat crossings.

John has come here from South Sudan. He tells me he’s now 18 years old. He left his war-torn home nation just before his 16th birthday. He feels that reaching Britain is his destiny.

“England is my dream country,” he says. “It has been my dream since I was at school. It’s the country that colonised us and when I get there, I will feel like I am home.

“In England, they can give me an opportunity to succeed or to do whatever I need to do in my life. I feel like I am an English child, who was born in Africa.”

He says he would like to make a career in England, either as a journalist or in human resources, and, like many others we meet, is at pains to insist he will work hard.

The boat crossing is waved away as little more than an inconvenience – a trifle compared with the previous hardships of his journey towards Britain.

We meet a group of men who have all travelled from Gaza, intent on starting new lives in Britain and then bringing their families over to join them.

One man, who left Gaza two years ago, tells me that his son has since been shot in the leg “but there is no hospital for him to go to”.

Next to him, a man called Abdullah says he entered Europe through Greece and stayed there for months on end, but was told the Greek authorities would never allow him to bring over his family.

Britain, he thinks, will be more accommodating. “Gaza is being destroyed – we need help,” he says.

A man from Eritrea tells us he is escaping a failing country and has friends in Britain – he plans to become a bicycle courier in either London or Manchester.

He can’t stay in France, he says, because he doesn’t speak French. The English language is presented as a huge draw for many of the people we talk to, just as it had been during similar conversations over the course of many years.

I ask many of these people why they don’t want to stay in France, or another safe European country.

Some repeat that they cannot speak the language and feel ostracised. Another says that he tried, and failed, to get a residency permit in both France and Belgium.

But this is also, clearly, a flawed survey. Last year, five times as many people sought asylum in France as in Britain.

And French critics have long insisted that Britain, a country without a European-style ID card system, makes itself attractive to migrants who can “disappear”.

A young man from Iraq, with absolutely perfect English, comes for a chat. He oozes confidence and a certain amount of mischief.

It has taken him only seven days to get from Iraq to Dunkirk; when I ask how he has made the trip so quickly, he shrugs. “Money talks”.

He looks around him. “Let me tell you – all of these people you see around you will be getting to Britain and the first job they get will be in the black market, so they won’t be paying any tax.

“Back in the day in Britain, they used to welcome immigrants very well, but these days I don’t think they want to, because there’s too many of them coming by boat. Every day it’s about seven or 800 people. That’s too many people.”

“But,” I ask, “if those people are a problem – then what makes you different? Aren’t you a problem too?”

He shakes his head emphatically. “I know that I’m a very good guy. And I won’t be a problem. I’ll only stay in Britain for a few years and then I’ll leave again.”

A man from Sri Lanka says he “will feel safe” when he gets to Britain; a tall, smiling man from Ethiopia echoes the sentiment: “We are not safe in our home country so we have come all this way,” he says. “We want to work, to be part of Britain.”

Emmanuel is another from South Sudan – thoughtful and eloquent. He left his country five years ago – “at the start of COVID” – and has not seen his children in all that time. His aim is to start a new life in Britain, and then to bring his family to join him.

He is a trained electrical engineer, but says he could also work as a lorry driver. He is adamant that Britain has a responsibility to the people of its former colony.

“The British came to my country – colonising, killing, raping,” he said. “And we didn’t complain. We let it happen.

“I am not the problem. I won’t fight anyone; I want to work. And if I break the laws – if any immigrant breaks the laws – then fine, deport them.

“I know it won’t be easy – some people won’t like me, some people will. But England is my dream.”

World

Trump applying ‘heavy pressure’ on Netanyahu to end war in Gaza

Published

14 hours ago

July 9, 2025

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Trump applying 'heavy pressure' on Netanyahu to end war in Gaza

US President Donald Trump is putting “heavy” pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza, two sources close to the ceasefire negotiations have told Sky News.

One US source said: “The US pressure on Israel has begun, and tonight it will be heavy.”

The source, who is not authorised to speak publicly, was referring to the White House dinner on Monday night between Trump and Netanyahu.

A second Middle Eastern diplomatic source agreed that the American pressure on Israel would be intense.

Netanyahu arrived in Washington DC in the early hours of Monday morning and held meetings on Monday with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.

The Israeli prime minister plans to be in Washington until Thursday with meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Trump has made clear his desire to bring the Gaza conflict to an end.

However, he has never articulated how a lasting peace, which would satisfy both the Israelis and Palestinians, could be achieved.

His varying comments about ownership of Gaza, moving Palestinians out of the territory and permanent resettlement, have presented a confusing policy.

Situation for Palestinians worse than ever

Over the coming days, we will see the extent to which Trump demands that Netanyahu accepts the current Gaza ceasefire deal, even if it falls short of Israel’s war aims – the elimination of Hamas.

The strategic objective to permanently remove Hamas seems always to have been impossible. Hamas as an entity was the extreme consequence of the Israeli occupation.

The Palestinians’ challenge has not gone away, and the situation for Palestinians now is worse than it has ever been in Gaza and also the West Bank. It is not clear how Trump plans to square that circle.

Trump’s oft-repeated desire to “stop the killing” is sincere. Those close to him often emphasise this. He is also looking to cement his legacy as a peacemaker. He genuinely craves the Nobel Peace Prize.

In this context, the complexities of conflicts – in Ukraine or Gaza – are often of secondary importance to the president.

If Netanyahu can be persuaded to end the war, what would he need?

The hostages back – for sure. That would require agreement from Hamas. They would only agree to this if they have guarantees on Gaza’s future and their own future. More circles to square.

Was White House dinner a key moment?

The Monday night dinner could have been a key moment for the Middle East. Two powerful men in the Blue Room of the White House, deciding the direction of the region.

Will it be seen as the moment the region was remoulded? But to whose benefit?

Trump is a dealmaker with an eye on the prize. But Netanyahu is a political master; they don’t call him “the magician” for nothing.

Trump makes decisions instinctively. He can shift position quickly and often listens to the last person in the room. Right now – that person is Netanyahu.

Gaza is one part of a jigsaw of challenges, which could become opportunities.

Diplomatic normalisation between Israel and the Arab world is a prize for Trump and could genuinely secure him the Nobel Peace Prize.

But without the Gaza piece, the jigsaw is incomplete.

World

IDF presence in Gaza ‘only issue’ still to be resolved in push for Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Sky News understands

Published

14 hours ago

July 9, 2025

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IDF presence in Gaza 'only issue' still to be resolved in push for Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Sky News understands

Only one issue remains unresolved in the push to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, according to Sky sources.

Intense negotiations are taking place in Qatar in parallel with key talks in Washington between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Two sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations have told Sky News that disagreement between Israel and Hamas remains on the status and presence of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) inside Gaza.

The two sides have bridged significant differences on several other issues, including the process of delivering humanitarian aid and Hamas’s demand that the US guarantees to ensure Israel doesn’t unilaterally resume the war when the ceasefire expires in 60 days.

On the issue of humanitarian aid, Sky News understands that a third party that neither Hamas nor Israel has control over will be used in areas from which the IDF withdraws.

This means that the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – jointly run by an American organisation and Israel – will not be able to operate anywhere where the IDF is not deployed. It will limit GHF expansion plans.

It is believed the United Nations or other recognised humanitarian organisations will adopt a greater role.

On the issue of a US guarantee to prevent Israel restarting the war, Sky News understands that a message was passed to Hamas by Dr Bishara Bahbah, a Palestinian American who has emerged as a key back channel in the negotiations.

The message appears to have been enough to convince Hamas that President Trump will prevent Israel from restarting the conflict.

However, there is no sense from any of the developments over the course of the past day about what the future of Gaza looks like longer-term.

Final challenge is huge

The last remaining disagreement is, predictably, the trickiest to bridge.

Israel’s central war aim, beyond the return of the hostages, is the total elimination of Hamas as a military and political organisation. The withdrawal of the IDF, partial or total, could allow Hamas to regroup.

One way to overcome this would be to provide wider guarantees of clear deliverable pathways to a viable future for Palestinians.

But there is no sense from the negotiations of any longer-term commitments on this issue.

Two key blocks have been resolved over the past 24 hours but the final challenge is huge.

The conflict in Gaza erupted when Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Some 20 hostages are believed to remain alive in Gaza.

Israel has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.