Gaza has lost all telecoms access in the third total communications blackout of the war as the Israeli army announced that it had surrounded Gaza City and split the territory into two on Sunday.
“Now there exists a south Gaza and a north Gaza,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement to reporters. He added that Israel continues “significant” strikes across Gaza in the war against Hamas and troops are expected to enter Gaza City in the next 48 hours.
Gaza’s phone and internet connections went down after being cut Sunday, according to the Palestinian telecom company Paltel. The Palestinian Authority blames Israel for the communication outages. Aid agencies have said that the blackouts slow down emergency services and phone calls and also prevent Palestinians from reaching their family and loved ones as the air strikes continue.
“We have lost communication with the vast majority of [the UN Relief and Works Agency] team members,” UN Palestinian refugee agency spokesperson Juliette Touma told The Associated Press.
The first blackout, which occurred a little over a week ago, left Palestinians without communication for 36 hours as Israel launched its ground invasion. The second blackout occurred days later and lasted just a few hours.
Israel warplanes also struck two Gaza refugee camps earlier Sunday and killed 53 people, wounding dozens more as Israel continued its offensive despite U.S. calls for a pause in warfare to get humanitarian aid to civilians. Maghazi refugee camp was struck overnight in a zone that the Israeli military told civilians to stay in as they focused their offensive elsewhere in the north. The Maghazi strike killed at least 40 people and wounded 34 others according to the Health Ministry.
Airstrikes also hit a house near a school at Bureji refugee camp in central Gaza, which houses around 46,000 people. The strikes at Bureji on Sunday killed at least 13 people. The camp was also hit on Thursday.
In the background of all this, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with Middle East leaders over the weekend in ongoing debate as to whether or not to enforce a ceasefire. The two sides were at loggerheads with Blinken arguing that a ceasefire would only allow Hamas to regroup. Despite this, he stressed the importance of protecting the innocent lives being lost every day in Gaza.
“We need to do more to protect Palestinian civilians,” Blinken told reporters. “We’ve been clear that as Israel conducts this campaign to defeat Hamas, how it does so matters.”
