Israeli strikes hit the Rafah area as well as Nuseirat in central Gaza. (File)
Rafah, Palestinian Territories:
Israeli forces on Friday struck targets across the Gaza Strip, with witnesses reporting airstrikes around the southern city of Rafah, the latest focus of the nearly eight-month war.
Israel launched its military incursion into Rafah in early May, despite international objections over the safety of civilians sheltering in the city on Gaza’s border with Egypt.
An attack that sparked a fire and killed dozens of people in a displacement camp at the weekend has sparked a new wave of condemnations.
Witnesses said Israeli strikes on Friday hit the Rafah area as well as Nuseirat in central Gaza, and an AFP correspondent reported intense shelling in the north.
Attacks in two separate locations killed a total of 11 people overnight, medical sources at a hospital in Deir al-Balah and the Nuseirat refugee camp said.
The Israeli military said its troops “continue… operational activities” in the Rafah area and found rocket launchers, weapons and “tunnels” in the city center.
An airstrike “targeted and eliminated” a fighter in that area, he added.
In central Gaza, new airstrikes “eliminated several terrorists operating close” to troops, the military said without elaborating.
Israel, which has repeatedly vowed to destroy Hamas after the Palestinian fighting group attacked southern Israel on October 7, said on Wednesday that its forces had taken control of the 14-kilometer Philadelphia corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, where he claims weapons were being smuggled.
Egypt, a longtime mediator in the conflict, has yet to officially comment on Israel’s seizure of power, which officials have previously said could violate the 1979 peace agreement between the two countries.
Amid stalled diplomatic efforts toward a ceasefire, Hamas said it informed mediators that it would only agree to a “comprehensive” truce agreement, including an exchange of hostages and prisoners, if Israel stops its “aggression.” .
On Thursday, Israel said its forces had killed around 300 Palestinian fighters in Rafah since launching its military operation in the city.
A torrent of civilians fled Rafah, carrying their belongings on their shoulders, in cars or in donkey carts.
Help at sea
Before the Rafah offensive began, the United Nations said around 1.4 million people were sheltering in the city. Since then, a million people have fled the area, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said.
The United Nations has warned of imminent famine in Gaza.
The Israeli seizure of the Rafah crossing further delayed sporadic aid deliveries to Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants and effectively closed the main exit point from the territory.
However, Israel said over the weekend that aid deliveries had been stepped up, including through the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza.
Cyprus, the easternmost member of the European Union, said humanitarian aid sent to Gaza was being held at sea off the territory’s coast after a US-built pier was damaged in bad weather.
In an interview with French channel LCI, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as “anti-Semitic slander” accusations that Israel was deliberately targeting and starving Gaza civilians.
Netanyahu, who spoke frequently to foreign media during the war but avoided interviews with Israeli media outlets, said the ratio of fighters to civilians killed so far in the Israeli offensive was “the lowest rate we have ever seen in a war.” urban”.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Thursday night outside the offices of private broadcaster TF1, the parent company of LCI, in the western suburbs of Paris to protest the broadcast.
Wearing black and white keffiyeh scarves and waving Palestinian flags, protesters chanted: “Gaza, Paris is with you.”
Car, house hit
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7 in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.
The fighters also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 who the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed at least 36,224 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory.
A medical official at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza said eight people, including two children, were killed in an airstrike that hit a house in the Al-Bureij refugee camp. .
Another source from Nuseirat’s Al-Awda Hospital reported three deaths in a car accident.
An AFP correspondent saw Israeli military vehicles southwest of the city of Gaza, in the north of the territory.
Sunday’s Israeli attack and resulting fire at the Rafah displacement camp killed 45 people, according to Gaza officials, and sparked two days of discussions at the UN Security Council.
Israel said it targeted a Hamas compound and killed two senior members.
Following the attack, Algeria submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council demanding an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages, but it was unclear when it would be voted on.
Amid the fighting, Israeli war minister Benny Gantz’s centrist party introduced a bill to dissolve parliament for early elections, drawing criticism from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party.
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