As Israeli forces conducted another ground raid in Gaza on Friday, all telecommunication services were reportedly cut across the strife-torn region amid a constant barrage of airstrikes and heavy bombardment in the northern part of the besieged Palestinian enclave.
On Thursday, internet monitoring firm NetBlocks wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the Palestinian internet service provider NetStream “has collapsed days after the operator notified subscribers that service would end due to a severe shortage of fuel supplies.” Further, AFP reported that the Hamas government said that internet and communications had been cut across the territory.
According to a report by Al Jazeera, its journalists have lost phone signals and internet connections. "We don’t know how many victims. We can only hear bombardments everywhere, but we don’t know any anything about the casualties, about the situation on the ground," one if its reporters, Tareq Abu Azzoum said in the report.
The Palestinian death toll has soared past 7,300 as Israel has carried out waves of devastating airstrikes in response to a bloody Hamas incursion into southern Israel on October 7. The Health Ministry in Gaza, which tracks the toll, released a detailed list of names and identification numbers on Thursday. The toll includes more than 3,000 minors and more than 1,500 women.
Earlier on Friday, the military said ground forces raided inside Gaza, striking dozens of militant targets over the past 24 hours. It said aircraft and artillery bombed targets in Shijaiyah, a neighbourhood on Gaza City's outskirts that was the scene of an urban battle in the 2014 Gaza war.
