Hamas said it fired rockets at Israeli commercial hub Tel Aviv on Thursday (March 20, 2025) in its first military response to the growing civilian death toll from Israel’s resumption of air and ground operations in Gaza.
Israel said it had closed off the territory’s main north-south route as troops expanded the ground operations they resumed on Wednesday (March 19, 2025).
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 504 people had been killed so far in the Israeli assault, including more than 190 children.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said it fired rockets at Tel Aviv in response to Israel’s “massacres” of Gaza civilians.
The Israeli army said it intercepted one projectile fired from Gaza and that two others struck an uninhabited area.
After weeks of stalemate, Israel resumed its air campaign early Tuesday (March 18, 2025) with a wave of deadly strikes that drew widespread condemnation.
The offensive shattered a relative calm that had pervaded in the war-ravaged Palestinan territory since a ceasefire took hold on January 19, 2025.
At the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, grieving families knelt by the bodies of their loved ones enveloped in blood-stained white shrouds.
“We want a ceasefire! We want a ceasefire!” one of them, Mohammed Hussein, told AFP TV, appealing for the international community to stop the killing.
“We are defenceless Palestinian people,” he added.
On Thursday (March 20, 2025), the Israeli army banned traffic on the territory's main north-south artery.
“Over the past 24 hours, IDF soldiers have begun a targeted ground operation in the central and southern Gaza Strip in order to expand the security zone between the northern and southern parts,” Army spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.