Israel expands ground offensive to entire Gaza Strip – ‘dividing it into three’
The Israeli military has said its ground offensive is expanding to every part of Gaza as its campaign to oust Hamas continues.
Tanks have cut off the road between Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, effectively dividing the Gaza Strip into three, the Reuters news agency reported on Monday.
Follow live: Military operations ‘almost complete’ in north of Gaza
It suggests Israel’s planned ground offensive in the enclave’s refugee-crowded south has begun.
People in Gaza had feared an Israeli ground offensive on southern areas was imminent.
Residents said they heard airstrikes and explosions in and around Khan Younis overnight and into Monday after the military dropped leaflets warning people to relocate further south towards the border with Egypt.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters in Tel Aviv: “The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) continues to extend its ground operation against Hamas centres in all of the Gaza Strip.”
James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, posted a voice note from Khan Younis on social media, saying it had been a night of “utterly relentless bombardments”. The sound of apparent strikes could be heard in the background.
“And of these bombardments, such is the tight knit pack of mums and children and families, that I can’t imagine how it would seem to me that everything that’s blasted off, I pretend no military expertise, but almost hit something… someone,” he said.
On Monday morning, the IDF issued new orders to people in around 20 areas of southern Gaza to evacuate.
It posted a map on X, formerly Twitter, with arrows pointing to areas civilians should head to.
A map issued by the IDF ordering Gazans to evacuate areas.
Pic: @AvichayAdraee
Many people in and around Khan Younis in the south have come from the north, after an Israeli order to move south earlier in the conflict, and are having to move yet again.
The Gaza Strip has effectively become a battlefield from the north to the south, with Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan saying: “There are no safe areas.”
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Israel 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.
The ground offensive has transformed much of the north, including large parts of Gaza City, into a rubble-strewn wasteland.
Hundreds of thousands of people have sought refuge in the south, which could meet the same fate.
Smoke rises in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas
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The expanded offensive follows the collapse of a week-long ceasefire and is aimed at eliminating Gaza’s Hamas rulers, whose attack on Israel almost two months ago has triggered the deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence in decades.
On 7 October, 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 more were abducted and taken into Gaza as hostages. More than 75 have now been released as part of a now-expired ceasefire.
The Hamas-led Gaza health ministry says more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since 7 October – and says 70% of fatalities are women and children.
The war has also displaced more than three-quarters of the territory’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians, who are running out of safe places to go.
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Under the Israeli plan to ensure people move as safely as possible, they have divided Gaza into numbered blocks, and people living there, in theory, will be told when to move before bombings begin.
Leaflets have also been dropped with a QR code linked to an interactive map with the numbered districts marked on it.
But UN officials and people in Gaza say it is difficult to heed these orders in real-time given patchy internet access and unreliable electricity.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
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Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
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Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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