Israel intensifies operations in Gaza Strip with dozens of airstrikes

The Israeli military continued to conduct dozens of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip over the Jewish weekend from Friday evening to Saturday evening.

The air force carried out around 150 attacks on “terrorists and terror infrastructure” over the period, the military said on Saturday.

Over the past seven days, 300 targets have been attacked in the fight against the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, and since the resumption of hostilities on March 18, more than 1,400 targets have been hit from the air, the military said further.

The sealed-off coastal area is home to over 2 million Palestinians.

According to reports, ground troops destroyed a tunnel several hundred metres long in the south near Rafah, which was equipped with booby traps.

It was claimed that 40 Hamas fighters were killed, and numerous weapons and vehicles of the militia were confiscated.

The claims could not be independently verified.

The Israeli military typically does not provide information on the number of civilian casualties resulting from its operations.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Saturday afternoon, citing the Hamas-controlled health authority, that 92 Palestinians had been killed and 219 others injured in the past 24 hours due to the fighting.

The number of Palestinians killed since the outbreak of the Gaza War on October 7, 2023, rose to 51,157. The figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians.

The trigger for the war was the worst massacre in Israel’s history, carried out by Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations in southern Israel. On the Israeli side, 1,200 people were killed.