By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Fadi Shana
DOHA/GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli tanks and aircraft hit targets in southern and central Gaza on Sunday and there were fierce gun battles in some areas as the war reached 100 days since the Oct. 7 attack led by gunmen from the Islamist Hamas movement.
Communications and internet services were down for the third day running, complicating the work of emergency and ambulance crews trying to help people in areas hit by fighting.
Fighting was concentrated in the southern city of Khan Younis, where Hamas said its fighters hit an Israeli tank, as well as in Al-Bureij and Al Maghazi in central Gaza, where the military said several militants were killed.
The military also said its forces destroyed several rocket pits used by Hamas to fire missiles at Israel.
Over the past 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said 125 people had been killed and 265 wounded, bringing the total number confirmed to have been killed since the start of the war to almost 24,000, with more than 60,000 wounded.
Speaking through video link to a conference in Istanbul, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh praised the Oct. 7 attack by the group’s fighters who rampaged through Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1,200 people and seizing around 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
“We are not seekers of wars. We are seekers of freedom,” he said, saying the attack was, in part, a response to the years-long Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has controlled since 2007.
The Israeli military says it has shifted to a new phase of the war, focused on the southern end of the territory, where almost 2 million people are now sheltering in tents and other temporary accommodation, after the initial phase centred on clearing the northern end including Gaza City.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off calls for a ceasefire, saying Israel will keep going until it achieves complete victory over Hamas. The military says, though, the next phase of the war will see more targeted operations against the movement’s leaders and military positions.
On Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where there has been a constant, low-level exchange of fire between troops and fighters from the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, the military said it killed four armed militants trying to cross the border.
It said several anti-tank missiles were fired into northern Israel, one of which hit a house in the community of Kfar Yuval, killing one person and causing a number of other casualties.
In Rafah in southern Gaza Strip, Nana, a 17-year-old high school student displaced from northern Gaza, said 100 days of war “turned our life upside down.”
“We demand the occupation not only to end the war but also compensation for the psychological damage of displacement and the hardships endured,” she said.
(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Reporting and writing by Nidal Almughrabi in Doha, Fadi Shana in Gaza.; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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