Israel Strikes Underground Tunnels as Ground Operation Expands

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

• Israel ramps up air and ground operations on Gaza, striking dozens of underground tunnels, bunkers, and telecommunications equipment.
• The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas militants.
• Israel Defense Forces say they targeted strikes on Hamas figure responsible for the militant group’s aerial equipment, including drones, UAVs, paragliders, and aerial detection and defense gear.
• Gaza-based Ministry of Health — an agency in the Hamas-controlled government — releases list of more than 7,000 people it says have been killed by Israeli strikes since the October 7 Hamas-led attack that killed more than 1,400 in Israel.

Israeli warplanes bombed Hamas tunnels and underground bunkers in the northern Gaza Strip, military officials said early Saturday, signaling an expanded ground and air assault to crush the enclave’s ruling Hamas militants after its bloody incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago.

Israel Defense Forces said fighter jets struck dozens of underground targets and knocked out key communications infrastructure, causing a near-blackout of information and severing Gaza’s estimated 2.3 million residents from contact with the outside world.

“In addition to the attacks carried out in the last few days, ground forces are expanding their operations tonight,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a televised news briefing late Friday, adding that the air force had planned to conduct extensive strikes on tunnels and other infrastructure.

Hagari comments raised the question of whether the long-anticipated ground invasion of Gaza was already beginning.

“Overnight, IDF fighter jets struck Asem Abu Rakaba, the Head of Hamas’ Aerial Array,” IDF posted on X, formerly Twitter, indicating it may have killed the militant group’s air chief.

“Abu Rakaba was responsible for Hamas’ UAVs, drones, paragliders, aerial detection and defense,” the post continued. “He took part in planning the October 7 massacre and commanded the terrorists who infiltrated Israel on paragliders and was responsible for the drone attacks on IDF posts.”

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said he had seen reports about Israel expanding its ground operations in Gaza but would not comment on it.

Israel has gathered 300,000 reservists and troops outside Gaza in preparation for the incursion against the militant group Hamas. Israeli airstrikes have been pummeling Gaza since Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack on Israel killing some 1,400 people, including children, and taking more than 200 hostages.

Kirby said the U.S. supports a pause in Israeli military activity in Gaza to get humanitarian aid, fuel and electricity to civilians there and as part of an effort, if possible, to get the more than 200 hostages abducted by Hamas out of Gaza.

Earlier on Friday, Palestinian mobile phone service provider Jawwal said that services including mobile and landlines phones and internet had been cut by heavy bombardment. The cutoff meant that casualties from strikes and details of ground incursions could not immediately be known. Some satellite phones continued to function.

A statement from the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had completely lost contact with its operations room in Gaza and all its teams operating on the ground.

UN General Assembly vote

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas and demanded aid access to the besieged Gaza Strip and protection of civilians.

The resolution drafted by Arab states was passed with 120 votes in favor, while 45 countries abstained and 14, including Israel and the United States, voted no. The General Assembly voted after the Security Council failed four times in the past two weeks to take action. Israel called the U.N. resolution “infamy.”

Israel is rejecting calls for a temporary truce in Gaza while the international community is troubled at the deteriorating conditions for 2.3 million people trapped under the heaviest air strikes Israel has ever conducted on the Mediterranean enclave.

“Israel is opposed to a humanitarian pause or ceasefire at this time,” Lior Haiat, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said on Friday, while a senior Israeli official said calls for a pause in fighting appeared in “poor faith.”

Hamas welcomed the General Assembly’s call for a Gaza humanitarian truce.

Late Friday, a senior member of the Hamas political bureau, Ezzat al-Rishaq, said Hamas is ready for an Israeli invasion in Gaza. “If [Prime Minister Benjami] Netanyahu decided to enter Gaza tonight, the resistance is ready,” he said on the social media app Telegram.

Israeli officials have pledged to ensure Hamas can no longer carry out attacks that threaten Israel following its October 7 massacre.

As Israeli airstrikes ravage swaths of the Gaza Strip, residents there are running out of food, water and other supplies. The death toll in Gaza has reached more than 7,000 people, the majority women and children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The ministry, which tracks the death toll, released a detailed list of names and ID numbers on Thursday, including more than 2,900 minors and more than 1,500 women.

World Health Organization official Richard Peeperkorn said on Friday the agency had received estimates that 1,000 unidentified bodies are still under the rubble in Gaza and are not yet included in death tolls, according to Reuters. Peeperkorn did not specify the source.

In an early Friday press conference, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, in the Near East, confirmed that 57 staff members have been killed in Gaza since war began, including 15 in one day.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.