Israel shifts offensive to southern and central Gaza three months on from October 7 attack
It is now three months since Hamas launched its terror attack on Israel triggering a ground invasion of Gaza, ITV News Correspondent John Ray reports from Tel Aviv
The Israeli military signalled that it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza, saying it has "completed dismantling Hamas' military infrastructure" there, exactly three months on from the October 7 attack by the militant group.
Israel did not address troop deployments in northern Gaza going forward.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said late on Saturday that forces would focus on the central and southern parts of the territory and strengthen defences along the Israel-Gaza border fence.
Over 22,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war so far - mostly women, children, and teenagers - according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The figure does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel during the initial Hamas attack three months ago.
Hagari's announcement came ahead of a visit to Israel by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Sunday was in Qatar, a key mediator.
US President Joe Biden's administration officials have urged Israel to wind down its blistering air and ground offensive in Gaza and shift to more targeted attacks against Hamas leaders.
In discussions with Qatar’s emir and Jordan’s king, Mr Blinken spoke of the need for Israel to adjust its military operations to reduce civilian casualties and significantly boost the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza.
He also stressed the importance of preparing detailed plans for the post-conflict future of the Palestinian territory, which has been decimated by Israeli bombardments.
The diplomaytic mission - that will also take him to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Egypt before he returns to Washington - is Mr Blinken’s fourth to the region since the war began.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 70 Palestinian reporters, as well as four Israeli and three Lebanese reporters, have been killed since Hamas' October 7 attack.
An Al Jazeera journalist, who was told live on air that his wife and children had been killed last year, has lost a fifth member of his family after his son was killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
The blast killed two Palestinian journalists, including veteran correspondent Wael Dahdou's 27-year-old son, who was a freelance journalist also working for Al Jazeera, in southern Gaza on Sunday.
Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Tharaya, also a freelance journalist, were killed when a strike hit their car while they were driving to an assignment in southern Gaza, according to Al Jazeera.
A third journalist, Hazem Rajab, was seriously wounded, the news channel said.
Amer Abu Amr, a photojournalist, said in a Facebook post that he and another journalist, Ahmed al-Bursh, survived the strike. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Al Jazeera strongly condemned the killings and other “brutal attacks against journalists and their families” by Israeli forces, and urged the International Criminal Court, governments and human rights groups to hold Israel accountable.
Another airstrike hit a house between Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, killing at least seven people whose bodies were taken to the nearby European Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the facility.
One man hurried in carrying a baby, and later walked the blanket-wrapped child to the morgue, AP reported.
“Everything happening here is outside the realms of law, outside the realms of reason. Our brains can’t fully comprehend all this that is happening to us,” grieving relative, Inas Abu al-Najja said.
On Sunday, officials at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis received the bodies of 18 people, including 12 children, killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday night.
More than 50 people were wounded in the strike on a home in the Khan Younis refugee camp, set up decades ago to house refugees from the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.
Israeli forces pushed deeper into the central city of Deir al-Balah, where residents in several neighbourhoods were warned that they must evacuate.
The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by the acronym MSF, said it was evacuating its medical staff from Deir al-Balah's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) urged the protection of health workers across Gaza.
Meanwhile, an escalation of cross-border fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah has complicated the US push to prevent a regional conflict.
Hezbollah described Saturday's rockets as an “initial response” to the targeted killing of a top Hamas leader in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut last week, presumed to have been carried out by Israel.
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