Hamas…Israel Conflict Day 335….Israeli Hamas hunting….

The Israeli Air Force conducted strikes in a humanitarian area in the southern Gaza Strip, targeting a militant command center, the Israeli military said in a statement early Tuesday. The strikes injured and killed dozens of displaced Gazans, the Hamas-run Civil Defense in Gaza said, calling it “a massacre.”

The Israeli military said that its Air Force had struck at “significant” militants who had “advanced and carried out terror attacks” and were “operating within a command and control center” in the Khan Younis humanitarian zone, adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

Civil Defense officials in Gaza said that entire families disappeared in the strike, along with about 20 tents, and that the attack had left three deep craters, suggesting more than one missile hit the area, Al-Mawasi. They said that there had been no warning and that there was a severe shortage of equipment needed for search and rescue efforts….

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• The Israeli military detained a U.N. convoy at gunpoint as it was heading to northern Gaza to roll out the polio vaccination campaign there, throwing into question whether vaccinations could begin on Tuesday as planned, according to UNRWA, the main U.N. aid agency for Palestinians. Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, said in a social media post that the convoy, with both international and local U.N. staff members, was stopped just after crossing the Wadi Gaza checkpoint on Monday and held for more than eight hours. The staff members have since been released, he said, adding that armored U.N. vehicles in the convoy suffered “heavy damage” from bulldozers and that UNRWA was no longer able to confirm whether the vaccination campaign in northern Gaza would take place on Tuesday. The Israeli military had said that intelligence suggested there were “Palestinian suspects” on the convoy, and that the convoy was detained so those on it could be questioned.

• Hamas denied that it had made new demands in cease-fire talks,with an official again blaming Israel for an impasse in negotiations. Last week, two American officials told The New York Times that Hamas had recently toughened its terms for the release of hostages, asking for more on the release of Palestinian prisoners in the opening phase of an agreement. Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, issued a statement on Monday saying it was “a lie” that the group had made additional demands. He said it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who had placed new conditions on a deal.

• The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for parts of Beit Lahia and Jabaliya in northern Gaza on Monday after saying on Sunday night that two projectiles had been fired from the area. One of the projectiles was intercepted, it said, and the other had crashed off the coast of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said that up to 86 percent of the strip was now under Israeli evacuation orders, and that the latest order covered areas that were set to be included in the continuing polio vaccination campaign.

• The third phase of the polio vaccination campaign was expected to begin on Tuesday in the northern part of Gaza, according to Jonathan Crickx, a UNICEF spokesman. It was not immediately clear how the latest evacuation orders would affect the effort, whose relative success in the central and southern parts of Gazahas relied heavily on agreements to pause fighting in specific areas. The Gazan Health Ministry reported that more than 441,000 children had received a first dose of the vaccine in those areas during the first two stages of the campaign. Roughly 150,000 more children in the north need to be inoculated, according to World Health Organization estimates. Health workers aim to fully vaccinate at least 90 percent of Gaza’s children under 10, which Mr. Crickx said would mean each child receiving a second dose in about a month.

• Israeli strikes across Gaza have killed at least 16 people in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll since Oct. 7 to nearly 41,000 people, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday afternoon. Among those killed on Monday were six people, including a woman and two girls, who died after Israeli forces bombed a home in Jabaliya al-Balad, in the north, the Palestinian Civil Defense said.

• As the threat of an all-out war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon looms, the commander of the United States Central Command, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, visited Israel to assess the country’s readiness, the Israeli military said in a statement on Monday, noting that he had arrived on Sunday. The United States has pledged to defend Israel. General Kurilla went to Israel’s Northern Command center, where he was briefed on Israeli plans for fighting in the region, the military said. On Monday, the Israeli military said a drone struck a residential building in the coastal city of Nahariya near the Lebanese border but no injuries were reported. The Israeli Air Force, meanwhile, struck multiple Hezbollah targets in Lebanon….

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Iran Update, September 9, 2024

Sep 9, 2024 – ISW Press