Israel’s military said it had dismantled Hamas’s military capabilities in northern Gaza, and was now focusing on doing the same in the central and southern parts of the enclave, where it said it plans to take a different approach to destroying Hamas.

There were still some Hamas fighters in northern Gaza, but they no longer worked under an organised military command, and were limited in how much damage they could inflict, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said late on Saturday in his daily news conference. Admiral Hagari didn’t provide details about control in the north, nor specify how the military’s operation farther south would be different.

For three months, since a deadly ambush on October 7, Israel has been bombarding Gaza, killing more than 20,000 people, according to Gazan health authorities, and displacing a majority of the enclave’s residents. Nearly half of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are now crammed into an area near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas as retaliation for the attack in southern Israel on October 7 in which about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 people abducted, according to Israeli officials. About 100 people are still being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas and other militant groups.

West Bank violence

An uptick in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early on Sunday left at least eight Palestinians, an Israeli officer and a resident of Jerusalem dead, officials said, adding to tensions in the territory even as fighting continued in Gaza.

An Israeli drone strike killed seven Palestinian men when clashes broke out during a pre-dawn Israeli military incursion into Jenin, a hotbed of Palestinian militancy in the northern West Bank, and an eighth man was killed by Israeli soldiers in the central West Bank, according to Palestinian health officials.

An Israeli border police officer was killed during the Jenin raid when a bomb planted under a road blew up the military vehicle in which she was riding, Israeli officials said.

Later on Sunday morning, armed assailants shot and killed a man from East Jerusalem who was driving along a road in the central West Bank. Israeli news media identified him as an Arab resident of East Jerusalem. The gunmen are presumed to have targeted the car because of its Israeli license plates.

New York Times News Service