JERUSALEM, Israel
Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant said that more troops would “enter Rafah” as military operations intensify in Gaza’s far-southern city, in remarks issued by his office Thursday.
The operation “will continue
as additional forces will enter” the Rafah area, Gallant said, adding that
“several tunnels in the area have been destroyed by our troops... this activity
will intensify.”
“Hundreds of [terror] targets
have already been struck, and our forces are manoeuvring in the area,” he said
according to a statement released by his office after he visited Rafah the
previous day.
Israeli forces took control
earlier in May of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, in a push
launched in defiance of US warnings that around 1.4 million civilians
sheltering there could be caught in the crossfire.
The United Nations agency for
Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said “600,000 people have fled Rafah since
military operations intensified” in Rafah.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to launch a full-scale ground operation in Rafah
in a bid to dismantle the remaining battalions of Hamas.
Gallant said that the
military’s offensive against Hamas had hit the militant group hard.
“Hamas is not an organization
that can reorganize, it does not have reserve troops, it has no supply stocks
and no ability to treat the terrorists that we target,” he said.
“The result is that we are
wearing Hamas down.”
However, Israel’s top ally the
United States has warned that it had not seen any credible Israeli plan to
protect civilians in Rafah.
Secretary of State Antony
Blinken said on Sunday that “Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to
inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum
filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas.”
The Gaza war broke out after
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the
deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s military retaliation
has killed at least 35,272 people, mostly civilians, according to the health
ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.
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