As Israeli forces massed along the border with Gaza on Sunday ahead of an expected ground invasion of the enclave, escalating clashes on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon along with strikes in Syria and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank intensified fears of a widening regional conflict.
The Israeli authorities said they were expanding a state-funded evacuation plan to move residents from an additional 14 Israeli villages near the border with Lebanon to safer areas. The move came as Israel’s military said Sunday it was contending with increasing attacks from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia that controls southern Lebanon, that have resulted in civilian and military casualties.
Amid concerns the conflict could spill over, the Pentagon said late Saturday that it was sending an antimissile battery and battalions of the Patriot ground-based air defense system to the Middle East following “recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces.”
Violence also has been surging across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military carried out a rare airstrike there overnight against what it described as an underground “terror compound” beneath a mosque in the city of Jenin. Two people were killed, according to Palestinian health officials.
The Israeli military also continued to pound Gaza with punishing airstrikes, as armed groups there fired a salvo of rockets toward cities in central Israel on Sunday morning.
While the timing of an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza remained unclear, senior Israeli commanders have increasingly been making public references to such preparations amid questions about when an operation might launch. The commanding officer of Israel’s ground forces, Maj. Gen. Tamir Yedai, has been meeting in recent days with soldiers training for “ground maneuvering,” according to a statement issued by Israel’s military on Sunday.
The Israeli military also reiterated its warning for civilians in Gaza to move to the southern part of the enclave as a humanitarian crisis spirals.
Aid groups and the United Nations warned that the first shipment of aid that arrived in Gaza on Saturday was just a fraction of what was needed. It was not immediately clear whether more aid would be allowed into the blockaded enclave.
Here are some other developments:
The convoy of 20 trucks that brought food, water and medicine into Gaza on Saturday was “totally insufficient compared to the desperate needs of the people,” Doctors Without Borders, an aid group that has provided health services in Gaza for two decades, said in a statement.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued “almost unabated,” while Palestinian armed groups continued with their “indiscriminate rocket firing” toward Israel, the United Nations said. The death toll in Gaza has increased to at least 4,385, while injuries number more than 13,500, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. On the Israeli side, the fatalities remained at 1,400 but injuries increased to almost 5,000, the U.N. said.
Syria’s state-run news agency said the airports in Damascus and Aleppo were shut after an early-morning strike by Israel that killed one civilian worker in Damascus. The report could not be independently verified and Israel didn’t immediately comment. Israel has a policy of not commenting on possible operations in Syria.
