Israel is preparing the ground for an invasion of Gaza. Israeli army tanks made a brief incursion into the northern Gaza Strip in what is believed to be a precursor to the “next phases of fighting” against the Islamist group Hamas, a military spokesman said this Thursday, a day after the Israeli prime minister. Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that his troops will carry out a “ground intervention” in the Palestinian enclave.

An Israeli military spokesman said that overnight, “the Israel Defense Forces conducted a targeted raid using tanks in the northern Gaza Strip in preparation for the next phases of the fighting.”

According to him, the special operation consisted of detecting and striking “numerous terrorists, terrorist infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch sites.”

Israeli forces “acted to prepare the battlefield” and “left the area at the end of hostilities,” he stressed. Since Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, following a massacre that killed more than 1,400 people, Israeli troops have already made brief ground incursions into the northern Gaza Strip while continuing a sustained bombing campaign that has killed more than 6,500 people. in the enclave.

Palestinian militias in Gaza continued to fire rockets towards various points in Israeli territory until Wednesday evening, and for the first time since the conflict began, towards the city of Eilat, in Israel’s far south.

Netanyahu indicated in a televised address that “there will be a ground intervention in Gaza” and that “work is going on around the clock” on preparations in coordination with Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi.

“I’m not going to go into detail about when, how or how much, nor am I going to go into detail about the various considerations that we take into account, many of which are unknown to the people of Israel, and that’s positive because we want to protect the lives of our soldiers,” – he said.

The Israeli President confirmed the order for all Gazan civilians to leave the northern strip, despite the fact that there are no security conditions for this.

More than a million Palestinians, half the population of the Gaza Strip, have been displaced to the south, where there is also constant bombing by Israeli forces, in the midst of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis after supplies of water, food and medicine have been completely cut off. , electricity and fuel from Israel.

Many Gazans were unwilling or unable to evacuate because they had sick or disabled relatives, while many hospitals had already been destroyed and were unable to care for the more than 17,000 wounded, the vast majority of whom were children and women. and the elderly, since the humanitarian aid received across the border with Egypt is not enough.