Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them again to evacuate the strife-torn Gaza Strip, thousands of Palestinians fled south towards Egypt on Saturday while the Israeli forces killed a senior Hamas commander.
India, which received the first batch of evacuated citizens on Friday, is sending another chartered aircraft to rescue more Indians from Israel.
PM Netanyahu said the week-long bombardment of Gaza “was just the beginning” of a retaliation against Hamas, whose terrorists launched a land-sea-air assault on Israel last weekend that left over 3,500 dead on both sides.
As Israel prepared for a planned ground offensive against Hamas, thousands of Palestinians fled to southern Gaza to seek refuge. Following a reported agreement between Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and the US, the refugees are likely to cross the Rafah border to enter Egypt.
The Israeli army said that ground forces made “localized” raids into Gaza in the last 24 hours to “cleanse the area of terrorists and weaponry” and find “missing persons.” Israel has alleged that Hamas took over 150 Israeli, foreign, and dual national hostages during the attacks last weekend.
It also said that a senior Hamas commander, Murad Abu Murad, who headed the group’s aerial operations in Gaza City, had been killed in an airstrike, according to the media reports.
After the attacks, at least 2,215 Gazans, including 724 children, have been killed in wave after wave of Israeli airstrikes on the densely populated Gaza enclave.
As violence escalates in the region, tensions spilled over to other nations in the Middle East and beyond with protests erupting in major cities in support of Palestinians and condemnation of Israeli airstrikes on residential buildings, killing civilians. Thousands protested in Beirut, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, and Bahrain in support of the Palestinians.
Israel also faced a confrontation on its northern front from the Lebanon-based, Iran-supported Hezbollah group. The Israeli army said its forces were “responding with artillery fire towards Lebanese territory” after a blast damaged the border barrier.
Meanwhile, a Reuters video journalist was killed in south Lebanon in an Israeli strike, while two other Reuters reporters, two from AFP, and two from Al Jazeera were injured, the media reported.