3 Hamas strongholds under fire

The Israeli military said it had taken control of the area surrounding the former headquarters of Hamas in Gaza City, and that its forces were engaged in intense battles in three areas of the Gaza Strip where it said the group still had “strongholds”, including in the south, where the UN has warned of an increasingly perilous humanitarian crisis.
The Israeli military now controls the area in Gaza City surrounding Palestine Square, home to municipal offices and the headquarters for Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in the enclave, spokesman Rear Adm.Daniel Hagari said late Sunday. Israeli forces are now focused, he said, on fighting in three areas: Jabaliya and Shajaiye, two neighbourhoods in northern Gaza, and in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.
Israel has yet to find Sinwar, whom they believe is hiding in southern Gaza. Admiral Hagari said that capturing or killing him is still a goal of the war, which has entered its third month. The director of Israel’s national security council, Tzahi Hanegbi, has rejected the idea that the lives of Sinwar and other top Hamas leaders could be spared if they went into exile outside Gaza — as Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, did in 1982 during a war between Israel and Lebanon.

The ongoing war is the bloodiest-ever Gaza conflict which has killed 101 Israeli soldiers and about 18,205 Palestinians, according to latest death tolls.
Hamas, which started the war with its Oct 7 attacks that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel, on Sunday warned the remaining 137 hostages it holds won’t survive unless Israel meets its demands and frees more Palestinian prisoners. Israeli PM Netanyahu called on the group to “surrender now”. “It is the beginning of the end of Hamas. I say to the Hamas terrorists: It’s over”.
Hamas is believed to have suffered heavy losses, but on Monday it fired a barrage of rockets that set off sirens in Tel Aviv. One person was lightly wounded, according to a rescue service, and Channel 12 broadcast footage of a cratered road and damage to cars and buildings in a suburb.
With very little aid allowed into Gaza, Palestinians face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods. Some openly worry that Palestinians will be forced out of the territory altogether in a repeat of the mass exodus from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, called claims that Israel intends to drive people en masse “outrageous and false.” But other Israeli officials have discussed such a scenario, raising alarm in Egypt and other Arab nations.