The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement says Israel’s recent attempt to invade the besieged Gaza Strip was futile and failed to achieve any of the occupying regime’s goals.
The Gaza-based resistance movement said in a statement on Monday that the Israeli regime’s attempted ground offensive against the coastal silver had failed to yield any results and the occupation troops had only targeted “open areas” in the besieged strip.
“The Zionist invasion of Gaza began a few days ago, and the enemy was not able to achieve anything other than targeting open areas,” the statement said, adding, “The enemy infiltrated into open areas in Gaza with air cover, which led to crimes against civilians.”
The Islamic Jihad also stressed that the Palestinian resistance would press ahead with its efforts to thwart Israel’s plots and confront its aggression.
“The resistance has been steadfast in this field and continues its struggle and can neutralize the plans and goals of the enemy,” the statement said, adding, “During this infiltration, the enemy received blows from the resistance.”
The Tel Aviv regime announced the start of a ground incursion into the besieged Gaza Strip late on Friday.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
The regime has further ordered 1.1 million people in the north of Gaza to evacuate and move south of the coastal sliver. However, it has continued to rain down bombs on the south.
According to the health ministry in Gaza, 8,306 Palestinians have been killed, including 3,457 children, in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7.
‘There is absolutely no ground advance’
The Monday statement by the Islamic Jihad came after the occupying regime earlier in the day stepped up its brutal air and artillery strikes on the densely-populated besieged area, with witnesses saying Israeli tanks reached the outskirts of Gaza City and were seen in Zaytun district.
Local media said the regime’s tanks made an incursion towards Salah al-Din Street, in the middle of the Gaza City, and also cut a key road from the north to the south of the coastal silver, touching off heavy clashes between the Israeli occupation forces and Palestinians resistance groups.
Reports added that the clashes took more than one hour and “plumes of smoke” could be seen rising over the area where the tanks had been stranded.
Salama Maarouf, the head of the Media Office in Gaza, dismissed any reports of Israeli advance on the besieged area and said the Israeli tanks had retreated from the outskirts of Gaza City.
“There’s absolutely no ground advance inside the residential neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip. What happened on Salah al-Din Street was the incursion of a few occupation army tanks and a bulldozer,” Maarouf said in a statement.
“These vehicles targeted two civilian cars on Salah al-Din Street and bulldozed the street before the resistance forced them to retreat. There is currently no presence of occupation army vehicles on Salah al-Din Road, and citizen movement has returned to normal on the road,” he said.
Media reports underlined that the tanks stayed for just over an hour and cars soon returned to the highway, driving onto the verge in the parts where craters had made the road unusable.
