GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories, June  28, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Israel's
military on Friday said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in
northern Gaza, killing "dozens" of militants in an area where it had declared
the command structure of Hamas dismantled months ago.

       The operation in Shujaiya, on the edge of Gaza City, caused numerous
casualties, witnesses and medics said on Thursday when it began.

       Renewed fighting in Gaza's north followed comments on Sunday by Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said the "intense phase" of the
war was winding down after almost nine months.

       Experts say they foresee a potentially prolonged next phase.

       Omer Dostri, a military expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and
Security, said he expects the army to reduce its ground presence and to
increasingly use drones and fighter jets "to further dismantle Hamas".

       On Friday in the Shujaiya area, an AFP correspondent witnessed an air
strike and saw smoke rising. Artillery fire boomed.

       In a statement, Israel's military said that, overnight Thursday, troops
"started to conduct targeted raids" in the Shujaiya area as part of an
operation that began earlier in the day.

       Intelligence had indicated "the presence of terrorists and terrorist
infrastructure in the area of Shujaiya", the military said, in its first
details of the operation.

       As troops went in, warplanes struck dozens of Hamas targets, it said,
following other "significant" strikes that killed "dozens" of militants in the
north.

       Hamas's armed wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, said on Friday it was fighting in
the northern Gaza neighbourhood of Shujaiya and had targeted Israeli troops
with mortar shells.

       Meanwhile, Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces had targeted the
agency's headquarters while advancing in western Rafah.

       Multiple agency staff were wounded, while two fire engines, an ambulance
and an excavator used for rescuing people from under rubble were damaged, one
of the agency's officials Mohammad al-Mughair told AFP.

       
       - 'Significant strikes' -
       
       On Thursday, a military spokesman told residents and displaced Gazans in a
social media message to leave "for your safety".

       They were asked to head south, to a declared "humanitarian zone" about 25
kilometres (15 miles) away.

       An AFP photographer saw many Palestinians leaving on foot, carrying their
belongings through rubble-strewn streets.

       Hamas said Israeli forces were "starting a ground incursion", reporting
"several" dead as "thousands flee under relentless bombing".

       The war started with Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel, which
resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP
tally based on Israeli figures.

       The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the
army says 42 are dead.

       Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,765 people, also
mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

       On Friday the military announced the death of another soldier, aged 19,
during combat in southern Gaza. This brings to 314 the number killed since
ground operations began in the territory.

       Elsewhere in the coastal strip, paramedics on Friday reported three people
killed in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.

       AFP images showed the municipal building had been destroyed.

       Colleagues prayed over the bodies of four civil defence volunteers killed
during bombardment of the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp, other AFP images showed.

       Orange work vests lay on top of their white-shrouded bodies.

       Witnesses on Friday reported artillery fire in Nuseirat.
       
       - 'Milestone' -
    
       
       Fighting in Gaza comes alongside growing fears of a wider regional
conflagration involving Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement. The two sides
have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.
       Such exchanges have escalated this month.

       US officials have voiced hope a Gaza ceasefire could also lead to a
reduction in hostilities on Israel's northern border, but months of on-off
mediation, also involving Egypt and Qatar, have not brought a deal.

       On Thursday, Hezbollah said it fired "dozens" of rockets at a military base
in northern Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

       Hezbollah said four of its fighters had been killed. Israel's military said
air strikes killed three Hezbollah operatives.

       In Gaza, most of the population has been uprooted and much of the
territory's infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving residents struggling to
survive.

       A UN-backed assessment this week said almost half a million people in Gaza
are still experiencing "catastrophic" hunger.

       An Israeli government spokesman dismissed the report, partly because "it's
based upon data from Hamas's own health institutions".

       But the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, on its website, says
it was created "precisely to supersede potential political interferences
through technical neutrality", and that its parameters are based on
international standards.

       Netanyahu's announcement that intense fighting is winding down comes with
his right-wing coalition under a range of pressures.

       Thousands of protesters again gathered in front of his Jerusalem residence
on Thursday to call for a hostage release deal, an AFP reporter said.

       In the Tel Aviv area, mounted police dispersed ultra-Orthodox men
protesting a Supreme Court ruling that they must be drafted for military
service.