Israel expands ground offensive to entire Gaza Strip – ‘dividing it into three’

Published

1 year ago

December 4, 2023

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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.

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.”

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.

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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.

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.

World

The fight for the Arctic – where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

Published

7 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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The fight for the Arctic - where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.

Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.

We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.

It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.

Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.

We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.

The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.

“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”

In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.

Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.

“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.

But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.

Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.

“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”

Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.

In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.

There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.

“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”

This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.

Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.

World

‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

Published

13 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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'What did they do to be burned and bombed?': Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.

Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing

The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.

“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.

He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.

Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu reportedly accepts US ceasefire plan

Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.

“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.

“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.

“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”

Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.

They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.

Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.

“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.

“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”

One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.

His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.

“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”

Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”

The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.

He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.

Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”

Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.