Israel escalates attacks amid global calls for ceasefire

RAMALLAH/GAZA:

Israel carried out deadly bombardments in Gaza on Sunday as international calls mounted for greater protection of civilians and the renewal of an expired truce with Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

The Israeli army said it had conducted more than 400 strikes in Gaza since a ceasefire collapsed on Friday, with the Palestinian government saying at least 240 people had been killed.

Hamas and Palestinian group Islamic Jihad announced "rocket barrages" against multiple Israeli cities and towns including Tel Aviv, and Israel said that two of its soldiers had died in combat, the first since the end of the truce.

At least seven people were killed in an Israeli bombing early Sunday near Gaza's southern border with Egypt, the government said.

Israeli strikes also hit the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza late Saturday, killing at least 13 people, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

US Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday sharply rebuked the rising civilian toll in Israel's eight-week war. "Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed," she told reporters at UN climate talks in Dubai.

"Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating."

An estimated 1.7 million people in Gaza -- more than two-thirds of the population -- have been displaced by war, according to the United Nations.

"I cannot find words strong enough to express our concern over what we're witnessing," the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Sunday on X, formerly Twitter.

Fadel Naim, chief doctor at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City, said his morgue had received 30 bodies on Saturday, including seven children.

"The planes bombed our houses: three bombs, three houses destroyed," Nemr al-Bel, 43, told AFP, adding he had counted 10 dead in his family and "13 more still under the rubble".

Gazans are short of food, water and other essentials, and many homes have been destroyed. UN agencies have declared a humanitarian catastrophe, although some aid trucks did arrive Saturday.

A flare falls over Gaza as seen from southern Israel. PHOTO: Reuters

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israel had told NGOs not to bring aid convoys across the Rafah border crossing from Egypt after the truce expired.

But the charity said on Saturday its Egyptian colleagues had managed to send over a number of trucks.

Hamas fighters broke through Gaza's militarised border into Israel on October 7. Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas in response and unleashed a brutal air and ground campaign that has killed more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians, the Palestinian authorities who run Gaza say.

A week-long truce, brokered with the help of Qatar and backed by Egypt and the United States, led to the release of 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

But that truce collapsed with both sides blaming each other for violating its conditions.

Israel claimed that Hamas had tried to fire a rocket before the ceasefire ended, and that it had failed to produce a list of further hostages for release.

Israeli negotiators left Doha on Saturday after reaching a dead end in talks aimed at securing a fresh pause in hostilities.
The Israeli army said 137 captives were still being held in Gaza.

Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Saturday that fresh military action was needed to "create the conditions that push (Hamas) to pay a heavy price, and that is in the release of hostages".

Israeli captives released from Gaza spoke publicly on Saturday for the first time, urging their government to secure the release of the remaining captives.

"The moral obligation of this government is to bring them home immediately, without hesitation," said Yocheved Lifschitz, 85, who was released by Hamas in October, before the truce deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron appealed for "stepped-up efforts to reach a lasting ceasefire" to free all captives, allow in more aid and to assure Israel of its security.

He took issue with Israel's stated war aims, warning that if the "total destruction of Hamas" in Gaza was the goal, "the war will last 10 years".

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war would continue "until we achieve all its aims" including eliminating the resistance movement.

"Our soldiers prepared during the days of truce for total victory against Hamas," he said in Tel Aviv on Saturday, at his first press conference since fighting resumed.

An Israeli tank operates near Gaza: PHOTO: Reuters

"There is no way to win except by continuing the ground campaign," Netanyahu told reporters, underscoring that this would be done while "observing international law".

Israel's air, naval and ground forces have attacked more than 400 targets in Gaza since the ceasefire ended, the army said on Saturday.

The figure is roughly in line with the daily average number of strikes prior to the pause, according to military figures released previously.

Warplanes hit "more than 50 targets in an extensive attack in the Khan Yunis area" of southern Gaza, according to the Israeli military.

Separately, members of an Israeli armoured brigade "eliminated terrorist squads and directed fire against terrorist targets in the north of the Gaza Strip", the military claimed.

In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army said troops shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint near the city of Nablus after he "drew a knife and started to advance towards them."

Syria said Israel carried out air strikes near Damascus on Saturday.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard accused Israel of killing two of its members in Syria who it said had been on an "advisory mission".

Palestinian man killed in West Bank in Israeli settler raid

Mourners carry the body of 38-year-old Palestinian, Ahmad Assi, who was killed in an Israeli settler raid, during his funeral near Salfit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 3, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank late on Saturday, killing one man and torching a car, Palestinian authorities said.

The Palestinian ambulance service said a 38-year-old man in the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan, in the northern West Bank, was shot in the chest and died as residents confronted settlers and Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli military said soldiers arrived at the scene and used riot dispersal means and live fire to break up the confrontation between residents and settlers. It said Palestinians shot fireworks in response and an Israeli and four Palestinians were injured. The incident was being examined and had been handed over to police, it said.

In another incident, Wajih Al-Qat, head of the local council of the village of Madama near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, said a group of about 15 settlers burned the car and broke the windows of a house with stones.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the incident.

The attacks are the latest in a series of similar incidents involving settlers that have drawn condemnation from world leaders including US President Joe Biden, whose administration is set to impose visa bans on extremist settlers.

The West Bank, which the Palestinians want as part of a future independent state, has seen a surge of violence in recent months as Jewish settlements have continued to expand and US-backed peacemaking efforts have stalled for nearly a decade.

The violence, at a more-than-15-year high this year, surged further after Israel launched an invasion of the separate enclave of Gaza in response to the deadly attack by Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Yesh Din, a human rights group that monitors settler violence, said there had been at least 225 incidents of settler violence in 93 Palestinian communities since the war started.

Prior to Saturday's incident, it said at least nine Palestinians had been killed in such attacks.

In a separate incident near Nablus, Palestinian authorities said a 14-year-old boy died of his wounds after he was shot during an incident in which the Israeli military said he brandished a knife at soldiers on a checkpoint.