Hamas Fighters Back in ‘Cleared’ District

Gaza Strip: Israel’s military yesterday said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in northern Gaza, killing “dozens” of militants in an area where it had declared the ­command structure of Hamas dismantled months ago.

The operation in Shujaiya, on the edge of Gaza City, caused numerous casualties, witnesses and medics said.

Renewed fighting in Gaza’s north followed comments last week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said the “intense phase” of the war was winding down after almost nine months.

Experts say they foresee a potentially prolonged next phase. Omer Dostri, a military expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said he expected the army to reduce its ground presence and to increasingly use drones and fighter jets “to further dismantle Hamas”.

Israel’s military said that troops had “started to conduct targeted raids” in the Shujaiya area.

Intelligence had indicated “the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area of Shujaiya”, the military said, in its first details of the operation.

As troops went in, warplanes struck dozens of Hamas targets, it said, following other “significant” strikes that killed “dozens” of militants in the north.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, said yesterday it was fighting in the northern Gaza neighbourhood of Shujaiya and had targeted Israeli troops with mortar shells.

Hamas’s own armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, also said it was engaged in fighting in Shujaiya and that there were “dead and wounded” Israeli troops.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces had targeted the agency’s headquarters while advancing in western Rafah.

Multiple agency staff were wounded, while two fire engines, an ambulance and an excavator used for rescuing people from under rubble were damaged, one of the agency’s officials, Mohammad al-Mughair, said.

The day before, a military spokesman told residents and displaced Gazans in a social media message to leave “for your safety”.

They were asked to head south, to a declared “humanitarian zone” about 25km away.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that “about 60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from the area.

Fighting in Gaza comes alongside growing fears of a wider regional conflagration involving Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. The two sides have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.

Such exchanges have escalated this month.

On Friday, Hezbollah said it had launched multiple attacks on Israeli military positions and troops said that one of its fighters had been killed by Israeli fire.