Israeli forces are surrounding the city of Khan Younis, Israel’s top military commander has said, as the ground offensive spreads to the south of the Gaza Strip.
“Sixty days after the war began our forces are now encircling the Khan Younis area in the southern Gaza Strip,” said Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the Israeli army’s chief of general staff, on Tuesday.
“We have secured many Hamas strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip, and now we are operating against its strongholds in the south,” Halevi said, according to the Times of Israel newspaper, as he announced the next phase of Israel’s ground offensive against the Palestinian group.
“Anyone who thought that the IDF [Israeli army] would not know how to resume the fighting after the truce was mistaken,” he added of the pause in hostilities that collapsed on Friday, and that enabled the exchange of captives held in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli jails.
Hamas’s Osama Hamdan said there would be “no negotiations or a [prisoner] swap” before the Israeli assault comes to an end.
Speaking to reporters in Beirut, Hamdan also said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “responsible” for the lives of Israeli captives in Gaza, adding that his true objective is to “eliminate the Palestinian people”.
Link from www.aljazeera.com
