22 October 2023 , 16:59
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Israel's military manoeuvres around Gaza intensified Sunday with massive overnight airstrikes and troop movements in the countdown to a much-anticipated ground offensive.
A staggering 300 air strikes were launched on Hamas positions in the early hours to dawn, Israel’s military claiming to have killed “dozens” of key Hamas fighters. Among the dead are believed to be a “rocket team” kingpin from the Gaza-based terror network and Israel bombed targets in the West Bank for the first time in 20 years.
The Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet foreign and domestic intelligence agencies have formed an elite revenge squad called “the Nili” whose only mission is to hunt down and kill every last Hamas commando who took part in the October 7 massacre. The hit unit is targeting the Hamas “Nukhba” so-called special forces involved in the October 7 attack and will be similar to Israel’s Nazi war criminal hunters.
The military escalation happened as Gaza’s Egypt crossing was opened again, allowing just a trickle of 17 aid trucks into the besieged Palestinian enclave, which needs 100 mercy deliveries a day. One medic at central Gaza’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said: “We don’t have enough shrouds for the bodies because the numbers are huge.
IDF soldiers in the town of Sderot, two miles from the border with Gaza (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)“Bodies are arriving in parts, unattached and in pieces. We can’t identify them because the bodies have been disfigured and crushed.”
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With cross-border missile exchanges over the Lebanon and Gaza border, a strike on Syria and sporadic violence in the West Bank Israel is now facing attack on four fronts. Israel was also forced to apologise after accidentally hitting an Egyptian position with a tank strike. That incident is being investigated.
The intense military build-up around Gaza has led to fears of a Lebanese Hezbollah attack on Israel’s northern frontier and the deadly conflict exploding into the wider Middle East. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned that America sees “potential” for an escalation of the war.
A Palestinian carries a child pulled out of a building hit in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah (AP)Gaza’s Health Ministry claims there have been 4,651 Palestinians killed, including 1,873 children, and 14,245 injured since the start of the latest Israel-Gaza conflict on October 7. War was triggered by a brutal massacre of Israelis, rocket attacks and fighting with the IDF after Hamas gunmen broke out of Gaza and went on a horrific killing spree.
There are growing concerns for the welfare of 203 hostages being held in Gaza, where Hamas have admitted they are not sure where all of them are being held. A total of 1,400 Israelis have been killed in the Hamas-triggered violence, most of them by gunmen marauding through communities outside Gaza after breaking out.
Daily Mirror photographer Rowan Griffiths in Sderot (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)
Daily Mirror Security of Defence Editor Chris Hughes in Sderot (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)And as many as 5,132 Israelis have been wounded since October 7, a figure that shot up today, with 12 seriously injured in the violence. On Sunday the Mirror team in Israel witnessed Israel’s military build-up intensifying as massive air strikes continued to smash Gaza targets, seen from the border town of Sderot.
The community has become a virtual near-evacuated ghost town haunted by fears some Hamas gunmen are still in hiding in the area, waiting to strike again. Israeli troops were seen patrolling and trying to hunt down Hamas stragglers as one more was seized by the IDF trying to sneak back into Gaza in the early morning.
A child escapes after an Israeli attack in Nuseirat camp, Gaza Strip (Anadolu via Getty Images)As deep booms echoed from Gaza just over a mile away from where we stood in Sderot we also heard the rattle of heavy machine gun fire somewhere nearby. This is the second day in Sderot we have heard gunfire but without being able to identify where the shooting was coming from amid the confusion of war.
But soldiers at the many checkpoints in the south now seem far more alert and we stopped and turned back from one checkpoint, gun-toting troops ordering us to “go the other way.” And at some point during the morning Hamas claimed it had targeted Israel’s troops who are rallying at secret locations some miles away from Gaza.
IDF soldiers in vehicles near the town of Sderot (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)Sources said the US is applying pressure to Israel’s war planners to delay a Gaza ground invasion - in a bid to get more aid in and free more hostages. But many observers believe Israel is in the final countdown to an incursion into Gaza.
And fears of a regional escalation have meant the US military has prepared more troops to deploy to bases and embassies in the Middle East. It is also sending more Patriot missile ground to air defence systems to protect US interests in the region.
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The Mirror has taken care not to identify troops or tank positions in photographs taken by our time near the frontline. Plumes of white smoke rose from already battered northern Gaza - as the horrific obliteration of its buildings were possible to see from Sderot across the barren scrubland between the two.
Israel is preparing for a ground offensive (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)An Israeli air strike hit a mosque in the densely-packed Jenin camp in the West Bank, killing two suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives according to the IDF. The blast hit the al-Ansar Mosque and was aimed at destroying an underground “terror compound” beneath the building, from where the IDF said an attack on Israel was imminent.
Lt Col Richard Hecht called terror preparations beneath the mosque a “ticking time bomb”. Three other people were injured and the Palestinian Foreign Ministry called the strike a “dangerous escalation in the use of warplanes” - in a copycat of the Gaza strikes.
Israeli soldiers and armoured vehicle near the border with Gaza (HANNIBAL HANSCHKE/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)Three more people were killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank - including a 19-year-old in Tubas and a 26-year-old in Nablus, along with another 13 killed in an Israeli operation on the West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp. And Syrian state media reported airports in Damascus and Aleppo were struck by Israeli missiles during the morning, killing two workers and damaging runways.
All eyes are on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon where Hezbollah fighters are threatening to escalate aggression towards the Jewish state if Gaza is attacked on the ground. Israel has ordered the evacuation of a further 14 communities close to borders with Lebanon and Syria and the US has vowed to send more air-defence systems to Israel amid fears the Iron Dome defences may become overwhelmed.
The town of Beit Hanun in the Gaza Strip which has been under constant IDF bombardment since the Hamas attack on Israel (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Hezbollah - which is twice as powerful and armed with missiles, some 150,000 of them - against going to war against his country. He said the network would make “the mistake of its life” if it sparked all-out war in the north, as he spoke to troops near the Lebanon border.
But Iran, which controls Hezbollah and backs Hamas too remains defiant over the Middle East crisis, its officials further ramping up the rhetoric and threats. In Tehran Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said: “I warn the US and its proxy - meaning Israel - that if they do not immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza anything is possible at any moment and the region will go out of control.”