Fighting in the two-week-old war intensified and broadened Sunday, with Israel's warplanes striking targets in Gaza, two airports in Syria, and a mosque in the occupied West Bank, and its troops reportedly battling Hamas fighters in Gaza. The ground combat, reported by Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades, would be among the first of the new war, CNN reports. Hamas claimed to have destroyed several military vehicles, which left the Israeli troops to withdraw across the border on foot. The Israel Defense Forces, which confirmed to CNN that it had troops inside Gaza at the time, said only that "shots were fired at IDF soldiers operating west of the Gaza Strip security fence, in the area of Kissufim" and that "an IDF tank struck the terrorist cell who fired at the soldiers."
A spokesman acknowledged that Israel has stepped up airstrikes against targets in Gaza to diminish the risk to its forces in the next stage, per the AP. The mosque it struck Sunday, in the town of Jenin, belongs to Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who carried out recent attacks and were planning another, Israel said. Two people were reported killed there. Syrian state media reported that the attacks on the international airports in Damascus and Aleppo killed one person and knocked runways out of service. Israel apologized for one strike after a tank fired accidentally at an Egyptian post near the border crossing at Kerem Shalom, per the Washington Post. Egypt said a border watchman suffered minor injuries.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and at least another 212 were seized as hostages and taken to Gaza, per the AP. Hamas says more than 4,600 people have been killed by strikes in Gaza since then, including the disputed count from a hospital attack. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that Hamas is responsible for the civilian deaths in Gaza. "It knew that in Israel's necessary response, civilians would be caught in that crossfire," Blinken said on CBS' Face the Nation. "This is on Hamas." (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)
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