Intense Israeli strikes rocked the northern part of the Gaza Strip on Friday evening, live footage filmed by AFP showed.
The Israeli military told AFP it is “continuously striking in the Gaza Strip” against the militant group Hamas that rules the Palestinian territory.
Al Arabiya’s correspondent reported that the Gaza Strip experienced the most intense bombing on Friday evening since the beginning of the war with Israel on October 7.
The Hamas government said Israel “cut communications and most of the internet” across the Gaza Strip on Friday.
The government’s media office accused Israel of taking the measure “to perpetrate massacres with bloody retaliatory strikes from the air, land and sea,” as heavy strikes hit northern Gaza.
Palestinian telecommunication company Jawwal said in a message on its Facebook page late on Friday that mobile phone service and internet in the Gaza Strip has been cut off due to heavy bombardment.
Internet connectivity in the Gaza strip has broken down, the Netblocks internet observatory said on Friday.
“Live network data show a collapse in connectivity in the Gaza Strip (...) amid reports of heavy bombardment,” the observatory said.
Hamas said late Friday it had fired “salvos” of rockets at Israel after intense Israeli bombing of the Palestinian territory.
“Salvos of rockets in the direction of the occupied territories (Israel) in answer to the massacre of civilians," Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on its Telegram channel.
