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As Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza began in earnest, tanks and armoured vehicles rumbled into the coastal enclave through breaches in the border wall that surrounds it.
Since launching its incursion over the weekend, Israel’s military has been tight-lipped about how many troops it has committed to its biggest operation in years, and about where they are now.
But satellite imagery published by Planet Labs shows a significant invasion: dozens of armoured vehicles are now at least 5km inside the territory on the northern outskirts of the strip’s capital Gaza City, poised to move deeper towards Hamas’s political and military centre of power.
Israel entered Gaza — which has been controlled by Hamas since 2007 — from numerous points in the north, and from the east.
The image here shows the push into Gaza from the north-west. After they breached the barrier wall in at least six places, vehicle tracks show how Israel’s columns cut through the sparsely populated farmland to the south of the border, before making their way deeper into Gaza towards more populated areas.
The image also shows signs of the ferocious aerial bombardment to which Israel has subjected Gaza since Hamas militants launched the deadliest ever attack on Israel three weeks ago. Buildings appear to have been damaged, and the fields are scarred by several large craters.
Farther south, the destruction from Israel’s bombardment is more intense. Buildings including a beach resort appear to have been damaged, and numerous craters are blasted into the ground.
According to Palestinian health officials, more than 8,500 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 21,500 injured since Israel began bombing the territory in response to the Hamas attack on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, and injured more than 5,350.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that troops were “conducting fierce battles against Hamas militants deep in the Gaza Strip” as they attacked “hundreds” of Hamas targets, without giving details of the locations of the fighting.
Officials from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group, told the Financial Times that tens of Israeli tanks had been trying to advance under air cover in north-west Gaza and in the south of Gaza City amid fierce battles.
The aerial image, from an earlier stage in the fighting on Monday morning, shows that dozens of Israeli tanks or armoured vehicles had already reached locations in north-west Gaza about 3km south of the border by then.
The third image shows Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles just north of the Karama area north of Gaza City on Monday morning.
The Hamas-controlled interior ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that Israeli forces had reached the Karama area and had also positioned tanks on Salah al-Din street, the main inland north-south axis in the enclave.
It added that the Israelis were “trying to separate the north of Gaza from its south”, ahead of an expected attempt by Israel to advance deeper into Gaza City.
Ahead of its ground invasion, Israel repeatedly ordered Gazans to leave the north of the territory and head south. More than 1.4mn people have been displaced in Gaza since the Israeli bombing campaign started, according to the UN, with nearly 672,000 sheltering in 150 UN facilities. The average number of displaced people per shelter was more than three times their intended capacity, the UN said.
The satellite image also shows the devastating toll that the war has taken on more built-up parts of Gaza, with dozens of craters in residential areas, and one entire neighbourhood appearing to have been destroyed.
Additional reporting by Mai Khaled in Gaza and Alan Smith in London
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