Israeli Troops Surge Into Gaza in Deepest Incursion Yet

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military appears to have begun an invasion of the Gaza Strip, one that is shrouded in secrecy and ambiguity, with troops advancing into the northern part of the enclave Friday evening accompanied by an enormous aerial and artillery bombardment, and remaining there through Saturday afternoon.

The military has not publicly described the operation as an invasion, and the maneuver appears, so far, more limited than some experts had predicted. The military has released only brief footage of its advance, and few Palestinian accounts and no independent footage of the operation have emerged. Gaza’s internet connections and phone lines — all controlled by Israel, according to the U.S. government — went down Friday evening.

But the armed wing of Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, said Friday night and Saturday afternoon that its forces were fighting with Israeli soldiers inside Gaza.

For those in Gaza, the fighting followed a night of terror, as the enclave absorbed the heaviest aerial pounding of the war to date.

“The explosions were happening to our left, to our right — from all directions,” Helmi Mousa, a Gaza City resident who huddled with his wife in their ninth-floor apartment, said Saturday. The bombardments were so intense overnight, he said, that even amid a sustained electricity blackout, their apartment was filled with the light of explosions.

“Our building was shaking, swaying back and forth,” he added. “We could hear the booms, the airplanes, the strikes.”

Amid a near total communications blackout, Mousa was reached on his foreign-registered cellphone, one of the few still functioning.

The Israeli military said Saturday that warplanes had focused 150 strikes on the vast networks of tunnels in Gaza that present a formidable challenge to Israel’s stated goal of dismantling the military and governing capabilities of Hamas, which staged the brazen Oct. 7 attack on Israel that led to the war.

The Israeli military has released only brief footage of its advance. But it appeared to be Israel’s longest and most ambitious ground operation since Hamas raided southern Israel three weeks ago, killing roughly 1,400 people.

Three military officers, all of whom spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive matter, said a significant Israeli force had entered northern Gaza after 6 p.m. Friday with tanks, armored vehicles, infantry and sappers.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/28/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-news/here-is-the-latest-on-the-war">The New York Times</a>.