Israeli troops divided the northern and southern parts of Gaza, as communications across the besieged territory were temporarily cut Monday for a third time since the war started. The troops are expected to enter Gaza City on Monday or Tuesday, Israeli media reported.
The developments came after Israeli airstrikes hit two refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing scores of people, health officials said. Israel has so far rejected U.S. suggestions that it take a humanitarian pause from its relentless bombardment of Gaza and the rising civilian deaths.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war surpassed 9,700, including more than 4,000 children and minors, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 140 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting, and 242 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.
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Some allowed to leave: Roughly 1,100 people have left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing since Wednesday under an apparent agreement among the United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.
Eight people were killed Monday in an airstrike close to three hospitals in Gaza City, the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry said.
Ministry spokesperson Medhat Abbas said the airstrike damaged the Psychiatric Hospital, the Eyes Hospital and Rantisi Pediatric Hospital. All three hospitals are still operational, he said.
Abbas showed images of what he said were damaged rooms and equipment at the Psychiatric Hospital. The images showed large holes in the wall and the roof with rubble on a hospital bed.
Communications restored: Communication services have been gradually restored across Gaza, a main telecoms provider and an advocacy group said Monday, 15 hours after the territory experienced its third communication blackout since the war began on Oct. 7.
Palestinian communications company Paltel announced that its services, including fixed, mobile and internet communications, have been gradually restored.
Alp Toker, director of the internet advocacy group NetBlocks.org, confirmed that internet connectivity has been restored to levels prior to Sunday’s disruption. Overall service, however, remained significantly below prewar levels, he said.
The blackouts disrupted the activities of aid groups working in Gaza as humanitarian needs grow.
Cease-fire called for: The heads of 11 U.N. agencies and six humanitarian organizations issued a joint plea for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, the protection of civilians, and the swift entry to Gaza of food, water, medicine and fuel.
In a statement issued Sunday night, they called Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attacks in Israel “horrific.”
“However, the horrific killings of even more civilians in Gaza is an outrage, as is cutting off 2.2 million Palestinians from food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” the heads of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory said.
The U.N. and humanitarian organizations said more than 23,000 injured people need immediate treatment and hospitals are overstretched.
“An entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essentials for survival, bombed in their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship,” the joint statement said.
The U.N. and aid organization leaders said over a hundred attacks against health care operations have been reported and 88 staff members from the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, have been reported killed – “the highest number of United Nations fatalities ever recorded in a single conflict.”
TEPID RESPONSE: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is wrapping up a grueling Middle East diplomatic tour in Turkey after only limited success in his efforts to forge a regional consensus on how to ease civilian suffering in Gaza as Israel intensifies its war against Hamas.
Blinken was meeting Monday in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan after a weekend of travel that took him from Israel to Jordan, the West Bank, Cyprus and Iraq to build support for the Biden administration’s proposal for “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s relentless military campaign in Gaza, the release of hostages held by Hamas and the prevention of an expansion of the conflict.
Neither Blinken nor Fidan spoke publicly as they began their talks.
On his mission, his second to the region since the war began, Blinken has found only tepid, if any, support for the pauses concept. Israel has rejected it outright while Arab and Muslim nations are instead demanding an immediate cease-fire as the Palestinian casualty toll soars from Israeli bombardments in response to Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
U.S. officials are seeking to convince Israel of the strategic importance of respecting the laws of war by protecting non-combatants and significantly boosting deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s beleaguered civilian population.