War in Gaza to continue throughout 2024

The Israeli military has said it expects the conflict in Gaza to continue throughout 2024. In a new year's message, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said troop deployments were being adjusted to prepare for prolonged fighting.

He said some troops -- especially reservists -- would be withdrawn to allow them to regroup.

"These adaptations are intended to ensure the planning and preparation for continuing the war in 2024," he said.

"The IDF must plan ahead out of an understanding that there will be additional missions and the fighting will continue the rest of the year."

He said that some reservists would leave Gaza "as soon as this week" to allow them to "re-energise ahead of the coming operations".

More than 21,800 people have been killed in Gaza - mostly children and women - during 11 weeks of fighting, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

At least 48 Palestinians were killed in overnight bombing in Gaza City on Sunday, the health ministry in Gaza said, with many still buried under the rubble.

Another strike killed 20 people sheltering at Al-Aqsa University in the west of Gaza City, witnesses told the AFP news agency.

The UN says 85% of Gaza's 2.4 million people - almost 2 million people - have now been displaced.

"Tonight the sky in world countries will be lit by firecrackers, and joyful laughs will fill the air.

"In Gaza our skies are now filled with Israeli missiles and tank shells that land on innocent, homeless civilians," Zainab Khalil, 57, a resident from northern Gaza now in Rafah, told Reuters.

Netanyahu said on Saturday that "the war is at its height". "We are fighting on all of the fronts," he said. "We have huge success but we also have painful cases. Achieving victory will require time.

Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for Palestinians to leave Gaza and make way for Israelis who could "make the desert bloom".

Air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and southern Israel as it saw in the new year, with Israeli missile defence systems intercepting rockets fired from Gaza, AFP reported.

Hamas's military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for both attacks in a video posted on social media.

They said they used M90 rockets in "response to the massacres of civilians" perpetrated by Israel.