Israeli warplanes, tanks and infantry cornered the last remains of a 1,000 strong battalion of the terrorist group’s forces holed up in the Indonesian Hospital and a nearby school.
The fierce fighting came as Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said that Gaza was now “surrounded” and vowed that the operation would continue “to the end”.
A few hundred yards ahead, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank fired off round after round. The air echoed with the pounding of air strikes, the thud of mortars and the chattering of heavy-calibre machine guns.
All the munitions – an extraordinary volume of them – were targeting a Hamas battalion making what the IDF said was its last stand in a hospital and school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.
“They talk the talk, but they don’t walk so good,” said Lieutenant Colonel Blick of the Israeli 551 Reserve Paratroop Battalion, which escorted The Telegraph to the front line on Tuesday.
Pointing to the plumes of dust rising about 2km to the south, Lt Col Blick said fewer than 100 Hamas fighters were taking shelter in the Indonesian Hospital, the last survivors of a thousand-strong unit.
“They fought when we came in but folded after a day. Their command lines were cut. Now, where you can see the dust rising, in the hospital, they are making their last stand,” he said.
Until five weeks ago, Beit Hanoun was home to more than 50,000 people. About half would have been under 20. Now it is broken, the devastation total.
The Telegraph was driven in by open-top Humvee, whipping down a dirt track with a gunner poised above our heads. The city’s perimeter was a jagged mess of shattered homes. The convoy stopped at what would have been a communal area but now houses Israeli tanks, heavy armour and a platoon of troops.
One of the soldiers took reporters to see a Hamas rocket launcher, dug into the garden of a house just a few yards from a pool where children would have played. The launcher was so hidden that it would have been close to impossible to spot by drone.
“They are buried in the ground, some in the woods, some in the kindergarten rooms, some in the schools”, he said, adding that some of the charges were designed to pierce armour with technology imported from Iran.
“The biggest threat was the IEDs. But luckily, we didn’t lose anyone,” he said. “Some of these guys are engineers, some of them doctors. They’re reservists. They are mature. They’re specialist. They’ve got life experience. So they work slow and secured.”
“For the first time in decades, the IDF is fighting in the heart of Gaza City, in the heart of terror,” said Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman, the head of the southern command on Tuesday, describing the ongoing offensive as “a complex and difficult war”.
Despite the firepower being deployed, he said his troops had the 240 hostages held by Hamas uppermost in their mind, and that “returning them is our compass”.
Hospitals, normally off limits in war, loom large in this conflict. Hamas claims the Israeli military is heartlessly shelling medical facilities where civilians are sheltering and doctors are treating the many wounded.
The IDF counters that the facilities are being “cynically” used as military bases by Hamas in a flagrant abuse of the conventions of war.
Most agree that the Indonesian Hospital is empty now of patients and is simply being used by Hamas to wage war. Taking it down with an air strike to finish the fighting must surely be tempting, but the IDF knows that would hand its enemy a propaganda coup.
In the past week, Israeli commanders have produced video evidence showing how hospitals around Gaza are connected to the Hamas “Metro” – the network of underground tunnels and bunkers the group has built.
His colleague Lt Col Blich, reflected that, ultimately, the terror of Oct 7 and the war in Gaza may bring a lasting peace. He said it had deeply shocked everyone, Israelis and Palestinians alike.
“My hope is that out of all this tragedy people would come together and rebuild and finish all this,” he said. “Israel is not going anywhere. Jews are not going anywhere. Palestinians are not going anywhere. We need to find a way to coexist, otherwise it’s a nightmare for everyone.
“So hopefully out of this tragedy – and it is a tragedy – what we’ll see is a new Middle East or a new Israel or a new Palestine, whatever you want to call it. Something [positive] like what happened to Europe after the defeat of the Third Reich”.
The Telegraph