Tag: israel gaza attack

Calls for probe, ceasefire follow Israeli gunfire near aid convoy

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World leaders on Friday called for an investigation and a ceasefire nearly five months into the Gaza war, a day after dozens of desperate Palestinians were killed rushing an aid convoy.

Israeli troops opened fire as Palestinian civilians scrambled for food aid during a chaotic incident on Thursday which the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry said killed more than 100 people in Gaza City.

The deaths came after a World Food Programme official had warned: “If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.”

The Israeli military said a “stampede” occurred when thousands of Gazans surrounded the convoy of 38 aid trucks, leading to dozens of deaths and injuries, including some who were run over.

An Israeli source acknowledged troops had opened fire on the crowd, believing it “posed a threat” .

Gaza’s Health Ministry called it a “massacre” and said 112 people were killed and more than 750 others wounded.

The fatalities helped push the total number of Palestinian war dead in Gaza to 30,228 mostly women and children, according to the ministry’s latest toll.

Overnight Thursday-Friday 83 people were killed in strikes, the Ministry said.

Also read | Gaza Health Ministry says war deaths exceed 30,000 as famine looms

The war began on October 7 with an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.

Israel’s military says 242 soldiers have died in Gaza since ground operations began in late October.

Call for transparency

“The Israeli Army must fully investigate how the mass panic and shooting could have happened,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote on social media platform X.

Her French counterpart Stephane Sejourne said “there will have to be an independent probe to determine what happened”, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani urged Israel “to protect the people in Gaza and to rigorously ascertain facts and responsibilities”.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, also writing on X, said “every effort must be made to investigate what happened and ensure transparency”.

The head of Libya’s Presidential Council, Mohamed el-Manfi, appealed for “an urgent investigation” by the United Nations Security Council into the “unprecedented crime”.

U.S. President Joe Biden — whose country provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel — said Washington was checking “two competing versions” of the incident.

Aerial footage of the incident made clear “just how desperate the situation on the ground is”, a U.S. State Department spokesman said. Washington was pushing Israel to allow in more aid, he said.

Also Read | What a deal between Israel and Hamas could look like

Complicated talks

The Gaza City aid incident came with talks progressing towards a ceasefire, but would now complicate those efforts, Biden said.

The White House later said it had asked Israel to probe the “tremendously alarming” deaths. Deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said the event “needs to be thoroughly investigated”.

The Foreign Ministry of Gulf emirate Qatar, a mediator in the war, condemned “in the strongest terms the heinous massacre committed by the Israeli occupation” and called for “urgent international action” to halt the fighting in Gaza.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the deaths and reiterated “the need to reach an immediate ceasefire”.

Further afield, in South America, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced the suspension of arms purchases from Israel after the “genocide” in Gaza City.

While the situation is particularly acute in Gaza’s north, Gazans are struggling for food, water and medical care throughout the territory including in far-south Rafah where around 1.4 million people have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

Israel is threatening to send in troops against Hamas fighters in Rafah.

Information conflicted on what exactly unfolded in Gaza City.

A witness, declining to be named for safety reasons, said the violence began when thousands of people rushed towards aid trucks, leading soldiers to open fire when “people came too close” to tanks.

Israeli Army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the military had fired “a few warning shots” to try to disperse a “mob” that had “ambushed” the aid trucks.

“Thousands of Gazans” swarmed the trucks, “violently pushing and even trampling other Gazans to death, looting the humanitarian supplies,” he said.

When the crowd got too big, he said the convoy tried to retreat and “the unfortunate incident resulted in dozens of Gazans killed and injured”.

Also read | Rediscovering Palestinian statehood

‘Day from hell’

Aerial images released by the Israeli Army showed what it said were scores of people surrounding aid trucks in the city.

Ali Awad Ashqir, who said he had gone to get some food for his starving family, told AFP he had been waiting for two hours when trucks began to arrive.

“The moment they arrived, the occupation army fired artillery shells and guns,” he said.

Mr. Hagari denied Israeli forces carried out any shelling or strikes at the time.

Looting of aid trucks has previously occurred in northern Gaza, where residents have taken to eating animal fodder and even leaves to stave off starvation.

The chief of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said no UN agency had been involved in Thursday’s aid delivery, and called the incident “another day from hell”.

Among its war aims, Israel says it is fighting to bring home 130 hostages captured by militants on October 7 who remain in Gaza, including 31 presumed dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under increasing pressure over the captives.

On Friday relatives and supporters of the hostages rallied outside the US embassy branch in Tel Aviv in a call for help to secure their release.

At another protest in the city on Thursday night, Alon Lee Green, 36, said things were at a crossroads.

“It’s either we are going into an eternal war that will never stop,” he said, “or we’re going to a diplomatic agreement, an Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

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Israel presses on with Gaza bombardments, including in areas where it told civilians to flee

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Israeli warplanes struck parts of the Gaza Strip overnight into Saturday in relentless bombardments, including some of the dwindling slivers of land Palestinians had been told to evacuate to in the territory’s south.

The latest strikes came a day after the U.S. vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, despite it being backed by the vast majority of Security Council members and many other nations. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining.

“Attacks from air, land and sea are intense, continuous and widespread,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said before the vote. Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs — ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival.”

Mr. Guterres told the council that Gaza was at “a breaking point” with the humanitarian support system at risk of total collapse, and that he feared “the consequences could be devastating for the security of the entire region.”

Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving Palestinians with no option other than to seek refuge within the territory. The overall Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,400, the majority of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory, whose counts do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, accusing the militants of using civilians as human shields, and says it’s made considerable efforts with its evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way. It has said 93 Israeli soldiers have died since the ground offensive began.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said its forces fought and killed Hamas militants and found weapons inside a school in Shijaiyah in a densely populated neighbourhood of Gaza City. It said soldiers discovered a tunnel shaft in the same neighbourhood where they found an elevator, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from an UN-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun. Hamas said on Saturday it had continued its rocket fire into Israel.

Residents reported airstrikes and shelling in Gaza’s north and south, including the city of Rafah, which lies near the Egyptian border and where the Israeli army had ordered civilians to move to.

Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of a total of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said.

Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold on northern Gaza, where furious fighting has underscored heavy resistance from Hamas. Tens of thousands of residents are believed to remain despite evacuation orders, six weeks after troops and tanks rolled in during the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 raid targeting civilians in Israel.

About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Hamas raid, and more than 240 taken hostage. A temporary truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza.

On Saturday, a kibbutz that had come under attack on Oct. 7 announced that 25-year-old hostage Sahar Baruch had died in captivity. His captors said Baruch was killed during a failed rescue mission by Israeli forces early Friday. The Israeli military has only confirmed that two soldiers were seriously wounded in an attempted hostage rescue and that no hostages were freed.

More than 2,200 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of the truce, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

With only a trickle of humanitarian aid getting into just a few parts of the Gaza Strip, residents were reporting severe food shortages.

“I am very hungry,” said Mustafa al-Najjar, sheltering in a U.N.-run school in the devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. “We are living on canned food and biscuits and this is not sufficient.”

While the adults can cope with the hunger, “it’s extremely difficult and painful when you see your young son or daughter crying because there are hungry and you are not able to do anything,” he said.

Despite growing international pressure, the Biden administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel. Officials have expressed misgivings in recent days about the rising civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis, but have not pushed publicly for Israel to wind down the war, now in its third month.

“We have not given a firm deadline to Israel, not really our role,” deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told a security forum a day before the U.S. veto in the U.N. Security Council. “That said, we do have influence, even if we don’t have ultimate control over what happens on the ground in Gaza.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas, dismissing the hostages held in Gaza, and signalling terror groups everywhere.”

A delegation of foreign ministers from mainly Arab nations and Turkey was in Washington to push the U.S. to drop its objections to an immediate cease-fire. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Friday ahead of a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel’s bombardment and siege of Gaza is a war crime that is destabilising the region.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the U.S. veto showed Washington’s isolation.

“The American political system is now helpless on issues related to Israel. Therefore, Israel acts recklessly on this issue and continues its oppression.,” Mr. Fidan told Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu and broadcaster TRT.

Mr. Fidan and the Palestinian, Saudi, Indonesian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Qatari and Nigerian Ministers met with Mr. Blinken to press for an end to the fighting, while the group is to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Minister Melanie Joly on Saturday.

As fighting resumed after a brief truce more than a week ago, the U.S. urged Israel to do more to protect civilians and allow more aid to besieged Gaza. The appeals came as Israel expanded its blistering air and ground campaign into southern Gaza, especially Khan Younis, sending tens of thousands more fleeing.

“It was a night of heavy gunfire and shelling as every night,” Taha Abdel-Rahman, a Khan Younis resident, said by phone early Saturday.

Airstrikes were reported overnight in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where resident Omar Abu Moghazi said a family home was hit, causing casualties.

Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren coastline in the south, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians who have headed there portrayed a grim picture of desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and poor hygiene facilities.

“We didn’t see anything good here at all. We are living here in a tough cold. There are no bathrooms. We are sleeping on the sand,” said Soad Qarmoot, who was forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

“I am a cancer patient,” Qarmoot said late Friday as children circled a wood fire for warmth. “There is no mattress for me to sleep on. I am sleeping on the sand. It’s freezing.”

Imad al-Talateeny, a displaced man from Gaza City, said the area lacks basic services to accommodate the growing number of displaced families.

“I lack everything to feel a human,” he said, adding that he had a peaceful, comfortable life before the war in Gaza City. “Here I’m not safe. Here I live in a desert. There is no gas, no water. The water that we drink is polluted water.”

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Blinken visits West Bank as fierce fighting roils Gaza

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November 05, 2023 08:31 pm | Updated 08:32 pm IST – Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories

Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, meeting the Palestinian president as Israel pressed on with its deadliest campaign yet in Gaza to destroy Hamas.

Mr. Blinken arrived in Ramallah under tight security one day after meeting in Jordan with Arab Foreign Ministers angered by mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, where the Hamas-run Health Ministry said dozens were killed in a strike on a refugee camp.

In his sit-down with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Mr. Blinken said Palestinians in Gaza “must not be forcibly displaced”, and the pair discussed “the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians” in the West Bank, a U.S. State Department spokesman said.

Israel has repeatedly urged Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to head south as fighting intensified, spurring fears of mass displacement.

Mr. Abbas denounced “the genocide and destruction suffered by our Palestinian people in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s war machine, with no regard for the principles of international law,” according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Washington has rebuffed calls for a ceasefire, instead backing Israel’s goal of crushing Hamas militants who staged the deadliest attack in the country’s history on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has relentlessly bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip in response, levelling entire city blocks and killing more than 9,770 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Mr. Blinken last week told a Senate hearing Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority should retake control of Gaza, even though it currently exercises only limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long sought to sideline it.

The Israel-Hamas war has exacerbated tensions in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and in settler attacks, including three young men killed by Israeli forces on Sunday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

In the Gaza Strip, ground battles raged on Sunday in the north, where Israeli troops tightening their encirclement of Gaza City were seen engaged in house-to-house combat as tanks and armoured bulldozers churned through the sand in footage released by the Army.

In a video taken from Israel’s Sderot along the border with the Gaza Strip, an Israeli flag was seen raised on top of a destroyed building.

Since Israel sent ground forces into the north of the narrow Palestinian territory late last month, “over 2,500 terror targets have been struck” by “ground, air and naval forces”, the army said on Sunday.

Leaflets dropped by the Army again urged Gaza City residents to evacuate south between 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) and 2 p.m. (1200 GMT), a day after a U.S. official said at least 350,000 civilians remained in and around the city that is now an urban war zone.

In the latest strikes in Gaza, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said, Israeli bombing of Al-Maghazi refugee camp late Saturday killed 45 people, with an eyewitness reporting children dead and homes smashed.

“An Israeli air strike targeted my neighbours’ house in Al-Maghazi camp, my house next door partially collapsed,” said Mohammed Alaloul, 37, a journalist working for the Turkish Anadolu Agency.

Mr. Alaloul told AFP his 13-year-old son, Ahmed, and his four-year-old son, Qais, were killed in the bombing, along with his brother.

A military spokesperson said Israel was looking into whether its forces had been operating in the area at the time of the bombing.

During a visit to Qatar, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna called for “an immediate, durable and observed humanitarian truce” that could “lead to a ceasefire”, though Netanyahu has rejected talk of a truce until Hamas releases all hostages.

Mr. Blinken faced a rising tide of anger in meetings with Arab Foreign Ministers in Jordan on Saturday, where he reaffirmed U.S. support for “humanitarian pauses” to ensure desperate civilians get help.

Mr. Blinken left the West Bank for Cyprus, the nearest EU member state to the Gaza Strip which last week said it was working towards establishing a maritime corridor for aid to Gaza.

Later Mr. Blinken was expected in Turkey whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has held Netanyahu personally responsible for Gaza’s growing civilian death toll.

Turkey on Saturday said it was recalling its ambassador to Israel and breaking off contacts with Netanyahu.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, whose country has been acting as the sole conduit for foreigners to escape the Gaza Strip and for aid to get in, called for an “immediate and comprehensive ceasefire”.

The call was echoed by thousands of protesters in Washington in solidarity with Palestinians, one of multiple rallies held from Indonesia to Iran as well as in European cities.

“The violence in Gaza has been prolonged and indiscriminate — it’s not a war but a massacre,” 27-year-old Indonesian protester Dwi Nurfitriani said during a march in Jakarta.

Thousands also demonstrated in Israel on Saturday as pressure mounts on Netanyahu over his government’s lack of preparedness for the October 7 attacks and its handling of the hostage crisis.

In Tel Aviv, relatives and friends of some of the hostages chanted “bring them home now”, while in Jerusalem, hundreds came together outside Mr. Netanyahu’s residence with more explicit calls for his resignation.

Hamas said late Saturday the evacuation of dual nationals and foreigners from Gaza was being suspended until Israel lets some wounded Palestinians reach Rafah so they can cross the border for hospital treatment in Egypt.

A senior White House official said Hamas had tried to use a U.S.-brokered deal opening the Egyptian border crossing to get its cadres out, calling it “just unacceptable”.

Concluding a two-day visit to Egypt, Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme, on Sunday appealed for more aid for Gaza, stressing that trucks allowed in so far are no match for needs on the ground.

“Right now, parents in Gaza do not know whether they can feed their children today and whether they will even survive to see tomorrow,” she said after visiting the Rafah border crossing.

“Today, I’m making an urgent plea for the millions of people whose lives are being torn apart by this crisis.”

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Warplanes strike Gaza refugee camp as Israel rejects U.S. push for a pause in fighting

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November 05, 2023 08:15 pm | Updated November 06, 2023 01:55 am IST – DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip

Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens, health officials said. The strike came as Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for a pause to get aid to desperate civilians.

Also read | Israel-Hamas war, Day 30 updates 

The soaring death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international anger, with tens of thousands from Washington to Berlin taking to the streets Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire.

Israel has rejected the idea of halting its offensive, even for brief humanitarian pauses proposed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his current tour of the region. Instead, it said that Hamas was “encountering the full force” of its troops.

“Anyone in Gaza City is risking their life,” Israel’s Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant said.

Large columns of smoke rose as Israel’s military said it had encircled Gaza City, the initial target of its offensive. Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, and that number is likely to rise.

Airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza overnight, killing at least 40 people and wounding 34 others, the Health Ministry said. It said first responders and residents were still digging through the rubble, hoping to find survivors.

An Associated Press reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, who had been brought in after the strike. A surviving child was led down the hospital corridor by an adult holding her hand, her clothes caked in dust, an expression of shock on her face.

Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multi-story homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.

“It was a true massacre,” he said early Sunday while standing on the wreckage of destroyed homes. “All here are peaceful people. I challenge anyone who says there were resistance (fighters) here.”

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The camp, a built-up residential area, is located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians in Gaza to seek refuge as it focuses its military offensive on the north.

Despite such appeals, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas fighters and assets everywhere and accusing it of using civilians as human shields. Critics say Israel’s strikes are often disproportionate, considering the large number of women and children killed.

Mr. Blinken met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, a day after meeting with Arab foreign ministers in neighbouring Jordan. Abbas has had no authority in Gaza since Hamas routed forces loyal to him in 2007.

Mr. Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, who insisted there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.

Arab leaders have called for an immediate cease-fire. But Mr. Blinken said that “would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” when the group launched a wide-ranging attack from Gaza into southern Israel, triggering the war.

He said humanitarian pauses can be critical in protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out, “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas.”

Egyptian officials said they and Qatar were proposing humanitarian pauses for six to 12 hours daily to allow aid in and casualties to be evacuated. They were also asking for Israel to release a number of women and elderly prisoners in exchange for hostages, suggestions Israel seemed unlikely to accept. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press on the discussions.

Swaths of residential neighbourhoods in northern Gaza have been levelled in airstrikes. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs says more than half the remaining residents, estimated at around 300,000, are sheltering in U.N.-run facilities. But deadly Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit and damaged those shelters.

Israeli planes dropped leaflets urging people to head south from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Few appear to have heeded a similar order the day before.

An Israeli airstrike overnight struck a water well in Tal al-Zatar in northern Gaza, cutting off water for tens of thousands of people, the Hamas-run municipality in the town of Beit Lahia said in a statement early Sunday.

The U.N. said about 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes. Food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities is running out.

The war has stoked tensions across the region, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group repeatedly trading fire along the border.

In the occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were shot dead during an Israeli arrest raid in Abu Dis, just outside of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The military said a militant who had set up an armed cell and fired at Israeli forces was killed during the raid.

At least 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war, mainly during violent protests and gun battles during arrest raids.

Thousands of Israelis protested outside Mr. Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem on Saturday, urging him to resign and calling for the return of roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu has refused to take responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people. Ongoing Palestinian rocket fire has forced tens of thousands of people in Israel to evacuate their homes.

In another reflection of widespread anger in Israel, a junior government Minister, Amihai Eliyahu, suggested in a radio interview Sunday that Israel could drop an atomic bomb on Gaza. He later walked back the remarks, saying they were “metaphorical.” Netanyahu issued a statement saying the Minister’s comments were “not based in reality” and that Israel would continue to try to avoid harming civilians.

Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza are more than 4,800 Palestinian children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown of civilians and fighters.

The Israeli military said 29 of its soldiers have died during the ground operation.

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Hamas leader’s home hit in airstrike as Israel presses its attacks; U.S. envoy seeks aid route

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Israel’s military hit the family home of the exiled leader of Hamas on the outskirts of Gaza City with an airstrike Saturday and pressed ahead with attacks across in the besieged enclave where a humanitarian crisis is rapidly worsening.

With food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities running out, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged an immediate cease-fire to allow aid in.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is horrific,” Mr. Guterres said late Friday in an unusually blunt statement. “An entire population is traumatised, nowhere is safe.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been in the region since Friday trying to find ways to ease the plight of the civilians caught in the fighting and was meeting with Arab foreign ministers on Saturday. His mission is complicated by Israel’s insistence there can be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.

Mr. Guterres said he had not forgotten the slaughter of civilians at the hands of Hamas militants when they launched their attack on Israel almost a month ago, but said civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected. He also said civilians must not be used as human shields, and called upon Hamas to release all of the roughly 240 hostages it has.

The family home of Hamas’ exiled leader Ismail Haniyeh, in the Shati refugee camp on the northern edge of Gaza City, was hit Saturday morning by an airstrike, according to the Hamas-run media office in Gaza. It had no immediate details on damage or casualties and there was no immediate comment.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told The Associated Press that the house was being used by Haniyeh’s two sons.

The home is located in a narrow alley in the refugee camp, which has become a crowded neighbourhood of Gaza City over the generations. Haniyeh, a former aide to Hamas’ founder, Ahmed Yassin, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2004, has been in exile since 2019.

Overnight strikes also hit the western outskirts of the city and near Al-Quds Hospital.

Adly Abu Taha, a Gaza City resident who has sheltered in the hospital grounds for the past three weeks, said strikes have repeatedly hit close to the hospital in recent days.

“The bombardment gets closer day by day,” he said over the phone. “We don’t know where to go.”

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the city and across northern Gaza.

Israel says Hamas has extensive military infrastructure in the city, including a network of underground tunnels, bunkers and command centers. It says its strikes target Hamas, and the militants endanger civilians by operating among them.

The city is now encircled by Israeli forces, who have been urging civilians to head south to avoid getting caught up in the fighting.

Despite those warnings, Israel has continued striking in the south, saying it is targeting Hamas members, but bombs are also killing entire families.

Raed Mattar, who was sheltering in a school in the southern town of Khan Younis after fleeing the north early in the war, said Saturday that he regularly heard explosions, apparently from airstrikes.

“People never sleep,” he said. “The sound of explosions never stops.”

About 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes, according to the U.N.

In the center of Khan Younis, an airstrike early Saturday destroyed the home of a family, with first responders pulling three bodies and six injured people from the rubble.

Among those killed was a child, according to an Associated Press cameraman at the scene.

The Israeli military said ground forces were also now operating in the south, with an armored and engineering corps working to remove booby traps from buildings.

During the operation the military said fighters were seen exiting a tunnel and they were killed by Israel troops.

The military said there were also numerous attacks staged from tunnels on Israeli forces in the northern Gaza strip.

Elsewhere, skirmishes along Israel’s northern border continued Saturday morning as the Israeli military said it had struck militant cells in Lebanon trying to fire at Israel, as well as a Hezbollah observation post.

Throughout the war, Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have traded fire almost daily along the Lebanese border, raising fears of a new front opening there.

In his first public speech since the war began, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday suggested escalation was possible, but gave little sign that Hezbollah would fully engage in the fighting. So far, Hezbollah has taken calculated steps to show backing for Hamas without igniting an all-out war that would be devastating for Lebanon and Israel.

On Friday in Tel Aviv, on his third trip to Israel since the war began, Blinken pushed President Joe Biden’s calls for a brief halt in the fighting to address the worsening humanitarian crisis. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there could be no humanitarian pause until Hamas releases all the hostages it holds.

On Saturday he held meetings in Amman with diplomats from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian Authority, who remain angry and deeply suspicious of Israel.

In addition to aid distribution, allowing foreigners out and the release of hostages, Mr. Blinken is looking to get Jordan and other Arab states to begin to think about the future of Gaza if and when Israel succeeds in wresting control from Hamas.

Arab leaders have thus far resisted American suggestions that they play a larger role in crisis, expressing outrage at the civilian toll of the Israeli military operations but believing Gaza to be a problem largely of Israel’s own making.

More than 9,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, including more than 3,600 Palestinian children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown between civilians and fighters.

More than 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack. Rocket fire by Gaza militants into Israel persists, disrupting life for millions of people and forcing an estimated 250,000 to evacuate. Most rockets are intercepted.

Twenty-four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the ground operation.

The overall toll is likely to rise dramatically as the assault on densely built-up Gaza City continues.

More than 386 Palestinian dual nationals and wounded exited Gaza into Egypt on Friday, according to Wael Abou Omar, the Hamas spokesperson for the Rafah border crossing. That brings the total who have gotten out since Wednesday to 1,115.

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Israel steps up bombing of Gaza hours after first relief convoy enters

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October 22, 2023 03:29 am | Updated 03:29 am IST – Rafah, Palestinian Territories

The Israeli military announced it was stepping up its bombardment of Hamas-controlled Gaza Saturday just hours after the first aid trucks arrived from Egypt bringing desperately needed relief to civilians in the war-torn enclave.

The military said it aimed to reduce the risks its troops would face as they enter Gaza in the next phase of the war it launched on Hamas after the militant group carried out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history on October 7.

Hamas militants killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death, and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has retaliated with a relentless bombing campaign that has killed more than 4,300 Palestinians in Gaza, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

An Israeli siege has cut food, water, electricity and fuel supplies to the densely populated territory of 2.4 million people, sparking fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Tens of thousands of Israeli troops have deployed to the Gaza border ahead of an expected ground offensive that officials have pledged will begin “soon”.

“From today, we are increasing the strikes and minimising the danger,” military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari told a press conference Saturday.

“We have to enter the next phase of the war in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us.”

On a visit to a frontline infantry brigade, chief of staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said troops were ready to deal with any surprises Hamas had in store for them when they enter Gaza.

“Gaza is densely populated, the enemy is preparing a lot of things there — but we are also preparing for them,” Mr. Halevi said.

AFP journalists saw 20 trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent pass through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into Gaza on Saturday.

The crossing — the only one into Gaza not controlled by Israel — closed again after the trucks passed.

The lorries had been waiting for days on the Egyptian side after Israel agreed to a request from its main ally the United States to allow aid to enter.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the 20 trucks admitted on Saturday fell far short of the needs of Gazans, more than one million of whom have been forced from their homes.

“Much more” aid needs to be sent, Mr. Guterres told a peace summit in Egypt.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the aid and urged “all parties” to keep the Rafah crossing open.

But a Hamas spokesman said “even dozens” of such convoys could not meet Gaza’s requirements, especially as no fuel was being allowed in to help distribute the supplies to those in need.

In Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hosted a peace summit attended by regional and some Western leaders.

“The time has come for action to end this godawful nightmare,” Mr. Guterres told the summit, calling for a “humanitarian ceasefire”.

Mr. Guterres said “the grievances of the Palestinian people are legitimate and long” after “56 years of occupation with no end in sight”.

But he stressed that “nothing can justify the reprehensible assault by Hamas that terrorised Israeli civilians”.

“Those abhorrent attacks can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” he added.

According to Arab diplomats who spoke with AFP on condition of anonymity, the summit broke up without a joint statement, highlighting the gulf between Arab and Western countries on how best to bring lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Western delegates demanded “a clear condemnation placing responsibility for the escalation on Hamas” but Arab leaders refused, the diplomats said.

Instead, the Egyptian hosts released a statement — drafted with the approval of Arab delegates — criticising world leaders for seeking to “manage the conflict and not end it permanently”.

The statement said such “temporary solutions and palliatives… do not live up to even the lowest aspirations” of the Palestinian people.

Israel bemoaned the lack of a condemnation of the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

“It is unfortunate that even when faced with those horrific atrocities, there were some who had difficulty condemning terrorism or acknowledging the danger,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

A full-blown Israeli ground offensive of Gaza carries many risks, including to the hostages Hamas took and whose fate is shrouded in uncertainty.

So the release of two Americans among the hostages — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan — offered a rare “sliver of hope”, said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

U.S. President Joe Biden thanked Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political bureau, for its mediation in securing the release.

He said he was working “around the clock” to win the return of other Americans being held.

Natalie Raanan’s half-brother Ben told the BBC he felt an “overwhelming sense of joy” at the release after “the most horrible of ordeals”.

Hamas said Egypt and Qatar had negotiated the release and that it was “working with all mediators to implement the movement’s decision to close the civilian (hostage) file if appropriate security conditions allow”.

Almost half of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, and at least 30% of all housing in the territory has been destroyed or damaged, the United Nations says.

Thousands have taken refuge in a camp set up in the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Fadwa al-Najjar said she and her seven children walked for 10 hours to reach the camp, at some points breaking into a run as missiles struck around them.

“We saw bodies and limbs torn off and we just started praying, thinking we were going to die,” she told AFP.

The United States has moved two aircraft carriers into the eastern Mediterranean to deter Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both Hamas allies, amid fears of a wider conflagration.

Exchanges of fire continued across Israel’s border with Lebanon Friday.

Hezbollah reported the loss of four of its fighters while Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad reported one fighter killed.

In Israel, two Thai farm workers were wounded, emergency services said.

Violence has also flared in the West Bank, where 84 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, according to the health ministry.

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Over 2 million trapped in Gaza as airstrikes continue

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Israeli airstrikes pounded locations across the Gaza Strip early Thursday, including parts of the south that Israel had declared as safe zones, heightening fears among more than 2 million Palestinians trapped in the territory that nowhere was safe.

In the nearly two weeks since a devastating Hamas rampage in southern Israel, the Israeli military has has relentlessly attacked Gaza in response. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes continued overnight throughout the densely populated territory.

A residential building in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had fought shelter, was among the places hit. Medical personnel at Nasser Hospital said they received at least 12 dead and 40 wounded.

The bombardments came after Israel agreed on Wednesday to allow Egypt to deliver limited humanitarian aid to Gaza, the first crack in a punishing 11-day siege. Many among Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have cut down to one meal a day and resorted to drinking dirty water.

The announcement of a plan to bring water, food and other supplies into Gaza came as fury over a Tuesday night explosion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital spread across the Middle East. There were conflicting claims of who was behind the blast, which the Hamas-run Health Authority said had killed hundreds of Palestinians.

Hamas officials in Gaza blamed an Israeli airstrike, saying hundreds were killed. Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a rocket misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. Islamic Jihad dismissed the Israeli claim.

The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who visited Israel on Wednesday, said data from his Defense Department showed the explosion was not likely caused by an Israeli airstrike. The White House later said an analysis of “overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information” showed Israel was not behind the attack. But the U.S. continues to collect evidence.

Video from the scene showed the hospital grounds strewn with torn bodies, many of them young children. Hundreds of wounded were rushed to Gaza City’s main hospital, where doctors already facing critical supply shortages were sometimes forced to perform surgery on the floors, often without anesthesia.

More than 1 million Palestinians, roughly half of Gaza’s population, have fled their homes in Gaza City and other places in the northern part of the territory since Israel told them to evacuate. Most have crowded into U.N.-run school shelters or the homes of relatives.

Following early Thursday’s airstrikes, sirens wailed as emergency crews rushed to rescue survivors from a building where many residents were believed trapped under misshapen bed frames, broken furniture and cement chunks.

A small, soot-covered child, unconscious and dangling in the arms of a rescue worker, was taken out of a damaged building and rushed toward a waiting ambulance.

The Israeli military said it killed a top Palestinian militant in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, and hit hundreds of targets across Gaza, including tunnel shafts, intelligence infrastructure and command centers. It said it hit dozens of mortar launching posts, most of them immediately after they launched shells at Israel. Palestinians have been launching barrages of rockets at Israel since the fighting began.

Israel has said it is attacking Hamas militants wherever they may be in Gaza, and accused the group’s leaders and fighters of taking shelter among the civilian population, leaving Palestinian feeling in constant danger.

The Musa family fled to the typically sleepy central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah and took shelter in a cousin’s three-story home near the local hospital. But at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, a series of explosions, believed to be airstrikes, rocked the building, turning the family home into a mountain of rubble that they said buried some 20 women and children.

The dead body of Hiam Musa, the sister-in-law of Associated Press photojournalist Adel Hana, was recovered from the wreckage Wednesday evening, the family said. They don’t know who else is under the rubble.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Hana said. “We went to Deir al-Balah because it’s quiet, we thought we would be safe.”

The Israeli military said it was investigating.

In northern areas that Israel warned to evacuate, airstrikes also hit three residential towers in al-Zahra, the Hamas-led Interior Ministry in Gaza said, as well as homes along the border with Israel. Israel has massed troops in the area and is expected to launch a ground invasion into Gaza, though military officials say no decision has been made.

The Gaza Health Ministry said 3,478 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, and more than 12,000 wounded, mostly women, children and the elderly. Another 1,300 people are believed buried under the rubble, health authorities said.

More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians slain during Hamas’ deadly incursion on Oct. 7. Roughly 200 others were abducted. The Israeli military said Thursday it had notified the families of 203 captives.

Violence between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has also flared in recent days amid fears the fighting could spread across the region. In the West Bank, where scores of Palestinians have been killed since the war started, Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians in the past two days, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The deal to get aid into Gaza remained fragile, as hospitals in the sealed territory say they are on the verge of collapse.

Biden said Egypt’s president agreed to open the Rafah crossing to let in an initial group of 20 trucks with humanitarian aid. If Hamas confiscates aid, “it will end,” he said. The aid will start moving Friday at the earliest, White House officials said.

Egypt must still repair the road across the border, which was cratered by Israeli airstrikes. More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid are positioned at or near the crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, said the head of the Red Crescent for North Sinai, Khalid Zayed.

Supplies will go in under supervision of the U.N., Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Al-Arabiya TV. Asked if foreigners and dual nationals seeking to leave would be let through, he said: “As long as the crossing is operating normally and the (crossing) facility has been repaired.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was approved after a request from Biden. It said Israel “will not thwart” deliveries of food, water or medicine from Egypt, as long as they are limited to civilians in the south of the Gaza Strip and don’t go to Hamas militants. The statement made no mention of fuel, which is badly needed for hospital generators.

Relatives of some of the people who were taken hostage and forced back to Gaza during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reacted with fury to the aid announcement.

“Children, infants, women, soldiers, men, and elderly, some with serious illnesses, wounded and shot, are held underground like animals,” said a statement from the Hostage and Missing Families Forum. But “the Israeli government pampers the murderers and kidnappers.”

In his brief visit, Biden tried to strike a balance between showing U.S. support for Israel, while containing growing alarm among Arab allies. He also announced $100 million in humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Israel on Thursday in a trip aimed at showing solidarity after the Hamas attack and preventing the war from escalating.

The people of Israel had “suffered an unspeakable, horrific act of terrorism and I want you to know that the United Kingdom and I stand with you,” he said on arriving.

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