The Israeli army announced that it was carrying out “significant strikes” this evening which “will continue in the coming days” in the Gaza Strip, adding that it had cut the Palestinian territory in two.

“Significant strikes are now underway … and will continue tonight and in the coming days,” said army spokesman Daniel Hagari, stressing that Israeli forces operating in the territory cut it into two: “southern Gaza and northern Gaza”.

Earlier, the Hamas government had spoken of “heavy shelling” around several hospitals in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where telephone lines and the internet had been cut.

Shelling occurred mainly near al-Sifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, according to the same source.

After 30 days of war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist Hamas, the encirclement of the northern part of the enclave and its de facto separation from the southern part of the Gaza Strip is an important stage of the operation carried out by the Israeli forces, Haggari underlined .

“We continue to allow passage for civilians from northern Gaza and Gaza City to the south,” he added, with 300,000 to 400,000 people still in the northern part of this narrow territory of 2.4 million people, where the humanitarian situation is catastrophic.

Since mid-October, Israel has been ordering civilians to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where fighting is increasingly fierce, to the south. Today, Israeli aircraft once again scattered leaflets in the sky over Gaza with this message.

The head of US diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, during a visit to the occupied West Bank today, warned of the risk of “forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, as part of the attack launched by Israel in retaliation for the bloody attack. of Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil.

According to Israeli authorities, at least 1,400 people died on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed on the same day of the Hamas attack. In the Gaza Strip, the latest toll announced today by Hamas says 9,770 people have been killed, including 4,800 children and 2,550 women, since October 7 in bombings by Israel, which says it wants to “exterminate” the Palestinian organization.