INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Israeli ground forces were confronting Hamas fighters across the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said on Sunday in its clearest indication
yet that a planned ground offensive in the enclave&s refugee-crowded south had begun as Israeli bombing killed and wounded dozens of
Palestinians.The Hamas Palestinian militant group said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops about 2 km from the southern city of Khan
Younis, Reuters reported.Residents, many of whom had moved there to flee earlier attacks in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, said they could
hear tank fire and feared a new Israeli ground offensive was building.The Israeli military earlier ordered people to evacuate some areas in
and near the city, but made no announcement of any new southern ground assault.The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) continues to extend its
ground operation against Hamas centers in all of the Gaza Strip,& spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters in Tel Aviv
&The forces are coming face-to-face with terrorists and killing them.Early on Monday, Hamas media quoted emergency services as saying an
Israeli strike killed three civil emergency workers in Gaza City in the north of the coastal enclave.Attacks on shipping in the southern Red
Sea on Sunday heightened fears of the conflict spreading.The United States Defense Department said three commercial ships were attacked by
Yemen&s Iran-allied Houthi movement in international Red Sea waters, and a United States destroyer operating in the area shot down three
drones as it responded to distress calls.A Houthi spokesperson said its navy had attacked two Israeli ships in the Red Sea with an armed
drone and a missile on Sunday, though an Israeli military spokesman said the two ships had no connection to Israel.The Jabalia refugee camp
in the north of Hamas-ruled Gaza was among the sites reported hit from the air
A Gazan health ministry spokesperson said several people were killed by an Israeli air strike.Footage obtained by Reuters showed a boy
covered in grey dust, sitting weeping amid crumbled cement and rubble from collapsed buildings.My father was martyred,& he cried in a hoarse
A girl in a pink sweatshirt, also coated with dust, stood between piles of rubble.Bombardments from war planes and artillery were also
concentrated on Khan Younis and Rafah, another city in Gaza&s south, residents said, and hospitals were struggling to cope with the flow of
wounded.Israel&s government spokesperson, Eylon Levy, said the military had struck more than 400 targets over the weekend &including
extensive aerial attacks in the Khan Younis area& and had also killed Hamas militants and destroyed their infrastructure in Beit Lahiya in
the north.There was no immediate comment on the reports of specific attacks.The renewed warfare followed the end on Friday of a seven-day
pause in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants which had allowed an exchange of 105 hostages held by Hamas, most of them
Israelis, for 240 Palestinian prisoners.The latest violence took place despite calls from the United States — Israel&s closest ally —
for Israel to limit harm to Palestinian civilians in the new phase of its offensive, focused on the south.The post Israel says ground forces
operating across Gaza Strip as offensive builds first appeared on Ariana News.
