Israel’s “Most Intense” Strikes On Gaza, Hamas Says Fired Rockets: 10 Facts

New Delhi: Israel launched massive strikes across northern Gaza tonight, which reports said were the most intense since the start of the war on October 7. Hamas said internet has been snapped in the Gaza Strip. Reports said contact with Gaza is lost.

Here’s your 10-point cheatsheet to this big story

1. The Israeli military said it had increased its strikes on Gaza “in a very significant way”, as news agency AFP live footage captured intense bombardment of the territory’s north. “We will continue to strike in Gaza City and around,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised address.
2. The Hamas government said Israel “cut communications and most of the internet” across the Gaza Strip today. The government’s media office accused Israel of taking the measure “to perpetrate massacres with bloody retaliatory strikes from the air, land and sea,” as heavy strikes hit northern Gaza.
3. Rocket warning sirens blared in several cities in Israel while the airstrikes in northern Gaza were going on. Central Tel Aviv was targetted in the rocket attacks today.
4. Hamas said today it had fired “salvos” of rockets at Israel after intense Israeli bombing of the Palestinian territory. “Salvos of rockets in the direction of the occupied territories (Israel) in answer to the massacre of civilians,” Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on its Telegram channel.
5. The UN chief warned today that Gaza faces “an unprecedented avalanche of human suffering” due to lack of food, water and power. “I repeat my call for a humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the delivery of life-saving supplies,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
6. The Israeli army accused Hamas of abusing hospitals in the Gaza Strip for military purposes. The allegation was swiftly denied by Hamas, and the main United Nations agency working in Gaza said earlier it had mechanisms in place to prevent aid being diverted.
7. “Hamas wages war from hospitals” in Gaza, military spokesman Daniel Hagari told journalists, adding that Hamas was also using fuel stored in hospitals to help carry out its operations.