Hamas fighters and Israeli forces engaged in limited clashes inside Gaza on Sunday as the Israeli military ramped up airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave ahead of what it described as the “next stage” of its war on the militant group.
Hamas claimed its fighters had destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush near the Gazan city of Khan Younis, forcing Israeli troops to retreat without their vehicles. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed its forces had been operating inside Gaza during the incident, and said an IDF tank struck militants who had fired on its troops.
The episode appeared to be one of the first skirmishes between the two sides on the ground inside the strip since war broke out after Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people. On October 13, the IDF said it had carried out raids inside Gaza.
Sunday’s clashes came as the IDF prepares for a potential ground operation in Gaza, amassing huge numbers of troops at the border and pounding the densely populated enclave with near-constant airstrikes in the last two weeks.
Officials at several hospitals in Gaza said they were overwhelmed with casualties on Sunday, with one describing a “bloody day” and another hospital scaling back dialysis treatments amid electricity and fuel shortages.
More than 4,600 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas attack began two weeks ago, the Gazan health ministry said.
Sources in Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza said there had been five air-strikes as of Sunday morning. Videos showed the hospital receiving over a dozen bodies wrapped in shrouds, while grieving family members try to identify them.
It has become the practice for parents in Gaza to write their children’s names on their legs to help identify them, should either they or the children be killed.
CNN filmed a toddler and three children who had been killed, with their names written in Arabic on their calves. All four were seen lying on stretchers placed on the floor in an overfilled room.
With the hospital’s morgue full, some bodies are being kept in the surrounding grounds, while wounded people, including children, line the corridors.