KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Monday, advancing in tanks and other armored vehicles on the territory’s main city and freeing a soldier held captive by Hamas militants. The Israeli prime minister rejected calls for a cease-fire, even as airstrikes landed near hospitals where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering beside the wounded.
The military said a female soldier captured during Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 incursion was rescued in Gaza — the first since the weekslong war began. It provided few details, but said in a statement that Pvt. Ori Megidish, 19, “is doing well” and had met with her family.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed her home, saying the “achievement” by Israel’s security forces “illustrates our commitment to free all the hostages.”
He also rejected calls for a cease-fire to facilitate the release of captives or end the war, which he has said will be long and difficult. “Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas,” he said during a news conference. “That will not happen.”
He also said he has no plans to resign in the face of mounting anger over the failure of Israel’s vaunted security forces to prevent the worst surprise attack on the country in half a century.
Hamas and other militant groups are believed to be holding some 240 captives, including men, women and children. Netanyahu has faced mounting pressure to secure their release even as Israel wages a punishing war it says is aimed at crushing Hamas and ending its 16-year rule over the territory.
Israelis fault Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for security failures that set the stage for war. Few see a path to leadership change amid the crisis.
Hamas, which has released four hostages, has said it would let the others go in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including many implicated in deadly attacks on Israelis. Israel has dismissed the offer, and Netanyahu said the ground invasion “creates the possibility” of getting the hostages out, adding that Hamas will “only do it under pressure.”
Hamas released a short video Monday purporting to show three other female captives. One of the women delivers a brief statement — likely under duress — criticizing Israel’s response to the hostage crisis.
Israel-Hamas war: In a national vigil of sorts, Israelis hope for the return of more than 220 people seized by militants and believed held in Gaza.
It was not clear when the Hamas video was made. The Associated Press usually refrains from reporting details of hostage videos because they show individuals speaking under duress and are often used for propaganda purposes.
Amos Aloni, whose daughter Danielle appeared in the video, told reporters that he and his wife were shocked when she appeared on TV but also felt “relief from her being alive and seeing her.”
The Israeli military has been vague about its operations inside Gaza, including the location and number of troops. Israel has declared a new “phase” in the war but stopped short of declaring an all-out ground invasion.
Larger ground operations have been launched north and east of Gaza City. Israel says much of Hamas’ forces and militant infrastructure, including hundreds of miles of tunnels, are in Gaza City, which before the war was home to more than 650,000 people, a population comparable to that of Washington, D.C.
Though Israel ordered Palestinians to flee the north, which is home to Gaza City, and move south, hundreds of thousands have stayed put, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones. Around 117,000 displaced people are staying in hospitals in northern Gaza, alongside thousands of patients and staff, hoping they will be safe from strikes, according to U.N. figures.
Israel-Hamas war: With restored communications came fresh images and videos of Gaza devastation, and news of loved ones who were hurt or killed.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, says nearly 672,000 Palestinians are sheltering in its schools and other facilities across Gaza, which have reached four times their capacity.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini accused Israel of “collective punishment” of the Palestinians, and of forcing their displacement from northern Gaza to the south, where they are still not safe.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians passed 8,300, mostly women and children. The toll, is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. More than 1.4 million people in Gaza have fled their homes.
During Hamas’ initial attack, the militants killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, also an unprecedented figure.
Lazzarini said 64 of the agency’s staff were killed in the past three weeks — the latest just two hours before he addressed an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, when an agency security official was killed with his wife and eight children.
Most Palestinians in Gaza “feel trapped in a war they have nothing to do with” and “feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas,” he told the Security Council.
Video on social media shows an Israeli tank and bulldozer in central Gaza blocking the territory’s main north-south highway, which the Israeli military earlier told Palestinians to use to escape the expanding ground offensive.
The video, taken by a local journalist, shows a car approaching an earthen barrier across the road. The car stops and turns around. As it heads away, a tank appears to open fire, and an explosion engulfs the car. The journalist, in another car, races away in terror, screaming: “Go back! Go back!” at an approaching ambulance and other vehicles.
The Gaza Health Ministry later said three people were killed in the car that was hit.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, declined to comment on where Israeli forces are deployed. He said additional infantry, armored, engineering and artillery units had entered Gaza and the operations would continue to “expand and intensify.”
The military said troops have killed dozens of militants who attacked from inside buildings and tunnels. It said that, in the last few days, it had struck more than 600 militant targets, including weapons depots and antitank missile-launching positions. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, including toward its commercial hub, Tel Aviv.
Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops who entered the northwest Gaza Strip with small arms and antitank missiles. It was not possible to independently confirm battlefield claims made by either side.
Meanwhile, crowded hospitals in northern Gaza came under growing threat.
Gaza’s Health Ministry shared video that appeared to show an explosion and a column of smoke near the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital for cancer patients. The hospital director, Dr. Sobhi Skaik, said it had sustained damage in a strike that endangered patients.
After a hospital blast in Gaza, doctors struggling to save lives amid danger and dwindling supplies say they and the medical system are near collapse.
All 10 hospitals operating in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders in recent days, the U.N.’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said. Staff members have refused to leave, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.
Tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering in Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest. Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command post beneath the hospital but has not provided much evidence. Hamas denies the allegations.
Strikes hit within 50 yards of Al Quds Hospital after it received two calls from Israeli authorities Sunday ordering it to evacuate, the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said. Some windows were blown out, and rooms were covered in debris. The service said 14,000 people were sheltering there.
Israel says that it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting the latter in danger.
Beyond the fighting, conditions for civilians in Gaza are continually deteriorating as food, water, medicine and fuel run dangerously low amid a weeks-long Israeli siege.
Violence surges in the West Bank as Israel increases raids to root out militants. Palestinians say the military is using the war as an excuse to crack down.
With no central power for weeks and little fuel, hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other lifesaving equipment. UNRWA has been trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running.
On Sunday, the largest convoy of humanitarian aid yet — 33 trucks — entered southern Gaza from Egypt. Relief workers say the amount is still far less than what is needed for the population of 2.3 million.
The fighting has raised concerns that the violence could spread across the region. Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have engaged in daily skirmishes along Israel’s northern border.
In the occupied West Bank, Israel said its warplanes carried out airstrikes Monday against militants clashing with its forces in the Jenin refugee camp. Hamas said four of its fighters were killed there. As of Sunday, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 123 Palestinians, including 33 children, in the West Bank, half of them during search-and-arrest operations, the U.N. said.
Some parents are pressuring U.S. officials — including President Biden and Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Ted Cruz — to do more to save hostages in Gaza.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
