Tanks go in as Israel warns invasion of Gaza is imminent

Netanyahu sends in hardware to prepare battleground’ as ministers debate evacuation of trapped Britons

- Nicholas Cecil 

ISRAELI tanks and bulldozers rolled into Gaza in a brief raid last night to “prepare the battlefield” for a ground invasion as calls grew for far more desperately-needed aid to be allowed into the besieged strip.

The Israel Defence Forces said “numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts” were targeted.

With 360,000 reservists called up, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was “preparing for a ground invasion”.

“I will not elaborate on when, how or how many,” he added, but large numbers of troops and tanks are already massed on the border with Gaza.

As the clock was ticking towards a major Israeli ground incursion, Whitehall’s Cobra emergency committee met this morning in London on how to evacuate Britons trapped in Gaza.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said the crisis talks also covered efforts to get a small number of British hostages seized by terror group Hamas freed, as well as to increase the flow of aid into the strip.

Israel has pounded the 25-mile long, six-mile wide enclave with relentless waves of air strikes after the October 7 Islamic State-style slaughter of more than 1,400 people by Hamas in the south of the country, with 224 seized hostages still being held in Gaza, according to military sources.

Health chiefs in Gaza say more than 6,500 people have been killed, including 750 in a 24-hour-period which would be the highest daily death toll.