Israeli tanks pushed deeper into central and southern Gaza on Saturday, backed by what residents said was aerial fire and heavy artillery, beginning a deadly offensive that has leveled much of the enclave, and Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated late Saturday that he would continue it for months. This is reported by Reuters and AFP.

Speaking on television at the start of the war’s 13th week, the Israeli prime minister said the army was fighting “on all fronts” and that it would take months to achieve victory.

He also said that at the end of the conflict, the “Philadelphia Corridor,” a narrow 14-kilometer buffer zone between the southern Gaza Strip and the Egyptian border, should be under Israeli control.

“We will ensure that Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel,” he added at a press conference, saying that “we need more time to achieve absolute victory and achieve all our goals.”

The Prime Minister talked about the “intense shelling” that the Israeli forces faced in the Gaza Strip. “It is a difficult battle, but we have the advantage. We destroyed more than 8,000 terrorists,” he said.

“We are hitting high-ranking officials and also eliminating Hamas leaders. Hamas will be defeated,” Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized.

The fighting was concentrated on Saturday in al-Bureij, Nuseirat, Magaz and Khan Younis, in the central and southern part of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army is advancing under heavy aerial bombardment. According to health authorities in Gaza, 165 Palestinians were killed and another 250 injured in the 24-hour bombing. Since the beginning of the war, the number of dead has reached 21,672 people, more than 56,000 people have been injured.

The Israeli military says it has lost 170 soldiers since the ground offensive began on October 20.

The Israeli government has vowed to destroy Hamas following an attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel on October 7. About 250 people were kidnapped, of which 129 remain hostages in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military then launched a massive air and ground offensive in Gaza that killed more than 21,000 Palestinians in two and a half months, according to authorities in the Hamas-run enclave.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had destroyed tunnels and killed several Palestinian militants in attacks on a Hamas military intelligence center and an Islamic Jihad command center in Khan Younis. The statement also reported fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, where it said 15 Palestinian militants had been killed and weapons caches captured.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad separately said they destroyed or damaged several Israeli tanks and other armored vehicles, while a Palestinian armed group said an Israeli soldier taken hostage was killed in Gaza after an Israeli airstrike. [Sursa: News.ro]