New Delhi: Within a day of a ‘targeted raid’, Israel conducted a fresh ground incursion into Gaza Friday.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said they struck infrastructure and operatives of Hamas which controls Palestine’s Gaza Strip. Ground troops, fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles struck anti-tank missile launch sites, command and control centres and Hamas terrorist operatives, the IDF posted on X. “The troops exited the area and no injuries were reported,” they said.
This second ground incursion in as many days comes after Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address Wednesday that his war cabinet had made up its mind to go in.
Amid international concerns about the fate of such a move, Netanyahu said they were preparing for an invasion though he did not give details on when a full-scale one would start.
Israel has carried out intense bombardment of the densely-populated Gaza Strip following the 7 October Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities that has reportedly killed around 1,400 people. The gunmen also took over 200 hostages.
More than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed in the bombardments, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Also read: Another Palestinian journalist in Gaza killed by Israeli strikes, toll of dead scribes at least 22
Half of Israel doesn’t want ground invasion
A poll conducted by an Israeli newspaper has found that half the population does not want an invasion of Gaza even as the military prepares for the next stage of the counter-offensive to find the hostages and “fully dismantle” the militant group.
Asked if the military should immediately escalate to a large-scale ground offensive, 29 percent of Israelis agreed while 49 percent said “it would be better to wait” and 22 percent were undecided, the poll published in the Maariv newspaper said.
This was a dip from 19 October, the paper said, when another of its polls found 65 percent support for a major ground offensive.
“From a breakdown of the answers, it emerges that there is no division in accordance with political camp or demographics, and that it is almost certain that the developments on the matter of the hostages, which is now topping the agenda, have had a great impact on this shift (in opinion),” Maariv wrote.
Maariv polled a representative sample of 522 adult Israelis. The margin of error was 4.3 percent, the newspaper said.
‘Need time to find & release hostages’
Hamas has said it cannot release the hostages until a ceasefire is agreed, Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted a member of a Hamas delegation visiting Moscow as saying.
The member, Abu Hamid, told the newspaper that Hamas needed time to locate all the captives taken by various Palestinian factions in the 7 October attack.
“They seized dozens of people, most of them civilians, and we need time to find them in the Gaza Strip and then release them,” Hamid said, adding that a “calm environment” was needed for that. Hamas had said on Thursday that around 50 of the hostages had been killed in the continuous Israeli air strikes.
Hamas has freed four hostages so far amid efforts by regional mediator countries to arrange a larger-scale release, which Qatar has said may happen soon.
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