Gaza death toll rises to 3,000 with Biden due to visit Israel

'This is outrageous and again it shows a flagrant disregard for the lives of civilians,' says UNRWA

GAZA:

The Palestinian death toll from Israel's bombardment of Gaza climbed to about 3,000 on Tuesday, health authorities said, and at least six people were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit a school run by the UN's Palestinian refugee agency.

The violence raged as Washington announced that US President Joe Biden would visit Israel on Wednesday to show support for its war on Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Palestinian group after Hamas gunmen crossed the border and killed 1,300 people, mainly civilians, during a rampage through southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, the deadliest single day in Israel's 75-year history.

Since then Israel has flattened parts of densely urbanised Gaza with air strikes, driven around half of its 2.3 million population from their homes, and imposed a total blockade on the enclave, halting food, fuel and medical supplies.

An Israeli air strike killed senior Hamas military commander Ayman Nofal, who was in charge of central Gaza, according to Hamas' armed wing, the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades.

The Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday that around 3,000 people - many of them women and children - had now been killed and 12,500 wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7.

It added that 61 Palestinians have also been killed and 1,250 wounded in clashes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said at least six people were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit a school it ran in Gaza's Al-Maghazi refugee camp.

"This is outrageous and again it shows a flagrant disregard for the lives of civilians," UNRWA said in a social media post. "No place is safe in Gaza anymore, not even UN facilities."

🛑 At least 6 people were killed this afternoon when an @UNRWA school was hit in al-Maghazi refugee camp.

This is outrageous & it again shows a flagrant disregard for the lives of civilians.

No place is safe in📍#Gaza anymore, not even @UN facilities.
⬇️https://t.co/9yh38bCqvk

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 17, 2023

Amid the death and destruction, the humanitarian crisis in the besieged enclave deepened as Israeli troops and tanks massed on the border for an expected ground invasion.

Scores of trucks carrying vital supplies for Gaza headed towards the Rafah crossing in Egypt on Tuesday, the only access point to the coastal enclave outside Israeli control, but there was no clear indication that they would be able to enter.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Biden's planned visit at the end of hours of talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said the Israeli leader had agreed to develop a plan to get humanitarian aid to Gaza civilians. He gave no details.

Blinken said Biden will "hear from Israel what it needs to defend its people".

He will also hear how Israel will carry out operations in a way that minimises civilian casualties and lets humanitarian aid into Gaza to help civilians "in a way that does not benefit Hamas", Biden said.

Israel's national security adviser predicted on Tuesday that the United States would get "involved" if the war escalated to the point where Iran and the heavily armed Lebanese group Hezbollah joined in on behalf of Hamas.

In a briefing, Tzachi Hanegbi noted expressions of support by Biden which included US naval deployments in the Mediterranean and a warning to Hezbollah and Tehran to stay out of the fighting.

"He is making clear to our enemies that if they even imagine taking part in the offensive against the citizens of Israel, there will be American involvement here," Hanegbi said.

Palestinians search through the rubble of a building after an Israeli strike in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. PHOTO: AFP

"Israel will not be alone ... A US force is here and it is ready," he added, without elaborating.

Washington is also trying to rally Arab states to help head off a wider regional war, after Iran pledged "pre-emptive action" from its allies.

Read also: Israel's Gaza evacuation order could breach international law – UN

After Israel, Biden is expected to travel to Jordan to meet King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

He will also see Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, which exerts limited self-rule in the West Bank but lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007. The PA on Tuesday accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Lifting rubble with bare hands

In Jabalia, in the northern half of Gaza that Israel has ordered evacuated, frantic residents used their bare hands to lift chunks of concrete and metal, crying out when they located bodies from under rubble in a smoking bombing crater. Others ran with stretchers carrying the wounded.

A man emerged from a ruined building holding the limp body of a small boy in his arms.

Residents fleeing the north have crammed into southern areas such as Khan Younis but have found no respite from bombing there.

Amin Hneideq awoke to an explosion in Khan Younis that sent the window crashing down, lacerating his daughter's head. The bomb had missed his house but destroyed a home nearby, killing a family from the north that had sought shelter there.

Mourners react as bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes lie at a hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. PHOTO: REUTERS

"They brought them from the north just to strike them in the south," said Hneideq, weeping.

UNRWA, said only around 14 percent of Gazans had access to water through a single pipe to Khan Younis that Israel allowed to open for three hours on Monday. Concerns about dehydration and disease were high as water and sanitation services had collapsed. "People will start dying without water," UNRWA said.

Even if the Rafah crossing opens to allow aid in, most Gazans will not be let out. Egypt rejects any mass exodus, saying it would amount to an expulsion of Palestinians from their land.

'Vile video'

Hamas released a video of a French-Israeli hostage, Maya Schem, one of 199 captives seized during the ' Oct. 7 raid and taken to Gaza.

France called the video "vile". Schem's mother told a press conference she was "begging the world to bring my baby back home".

Fighting has also intensified across Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had killed four people who had tried to cross the border to plant explosives. Security sources in Lebanon said four people had been killed by Israeli shelling near the village of Alma Al-Shaab on the Lebanese side of the frontier.

An Israeli soldier shades his eyes from the sun as he stands on a self-propelled howitzer near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip. PHOTO: REUTERS

Iran, which sponsors both Hamas and Hezbollah, has celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel but denies being behind them. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told state TV: "We cannot be indifferent to the war crimes committed against the people of Gaza."

Clashes have also worsened in the West Bank, which was already engulfed in its worst unrest for years before the Hamas attacks from Gaza.