Israel launched extensive aerial bombardment on Gaza in recent hours, the most intense since the war began, and the Israeli government confirmed that its forces were expanding their ground operations in the Palestinian territory.
Meanwhile, all telephone and internet communications were cut off in the territory, although early Sunday morning it was reported that some of the internet and telephone services had returned.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has left more than 8,000 dead according to authorities in the territory controlled by Hamas.
It is the response to the attack on October 7 that the Palestinian militant group carried out in the territory of Israel and which left some 1,400 dead and more than 200 people taken hostage.
On Friday, internet monitoring service Netblocks posted on X that there had been a “collapse in connectivity” in the Strip.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it could not speak to its teams in Gaza.
“We are deeply concerned about our teams’ ability to continue providing their emergency medical services, especially as this disruption impacts the central ‘101’ emergency number,” they wrote in a post on X.
The organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also said that there were lost contact with some of his Palestinian colleagues in the ground.
In a message shared on social media, the group said it was “particularly concerned for the patients, medical staff and thousands of families sheltering in Al Shifa Hospital and other health facilities.”
“We call for the unequivocal protection of all medical facilities, staff and civilians throughout the Gaza Strip,” MSF said.
In a statement Saturday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said Friday’s bombing and ground operations in Gaza by Israeli forces are “taking this terrible crisis to a new level of violence and pain.”
“To compound the misery and suffering of civilians, Israeli attacks on telecommunications facilities and subsequent internet shutdown have left Gazans with no way of knowing what is happening throughout Gaza and isolated them from the world.” abroad”.
“Last night we lost contact with our colleagues in Gaza. Our colleagues had already endured days and nights under the relentless shelling of Gaza,” said Volker Turk.
And he added that “there is no safe place in Gaza and there is no way out. “I am very concerned for my colleagues, as I am for all civilians in Gaza.”
This Saturday, Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli soldiers and commanders “are now in the Gaza Strip, deployed everywhere” and that the ongoing ground operation in Gaza is the second stage of the war with Hamas, with “very clear objectives.” .
He assured that additional Israeli ground forces have entered what he called “that fortress of evil,” referring to Gaza, to “dismantle” Hamas and bring the hostages home.
Risk of “atrocities”
The almost total blackout of telecommunications in Gaza could to cover “mass atrocities,” Human Rights Watch said.
“This information blocking risks covering up mass atrocities and contributing to impunity for human rights violations,” the group’s senior technology and human rights researcher, Deborah Brown, said in a statement.
As stated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, bombings of telecommunications infrastructure put “the civilian population in serious danger. In addition, ambulances and civil defense teams “They can no longer locate the injured or the thousands of people who are estimated to be still under the rubble.”
BBC Arabic Service reporter Mehdi Musawi tried to contact journalists and health officials in Gaza on Friday and could only get brief responses on WhatsApp.
He said he finally managed to contact the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, but by nightfall all lines of communication were cut.
By then, live images showed total darkness across the region. The journalist sent messages to everyone he had spoken to that same day, but they were not delivered.
The communications blackout in Gaza caused panic and anxiety among the Palestinian diaspora.
Over the past 20 days, sporadic and limited exchanges on WhatsApp have meant occasional moments of respite.
However, any prolonged breakdown in communication was met with crippling anxiety, punctuated by questions such as: “Are they dead? They are alive? Was your house also bombed?”
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