The United Nations says about one million people have been displaced from Rafah since early May, when Israel began ground operations in pursuit of Hamas militants. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Israel bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday, witnesses and first responders said, with fallout from the war bringing a resurgence of tensions to the Lebanon border and Yemen.

In the ninth month of war between Palestinian Hamas militants and Israeli forces, the Civil Defence agency in Gaza City reported 10 bodies recovered from Israeli strikes on three separate homes.

In Rafah witnesses reported clashes between militants and Israeli troops in the city’s west, and artillery fire towards a refugee camp in the city centre.

Fears of a broader West Asia conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters, who are backed by Iran and allied with Hamas, launching waves of rockets and drones against Israeli military targets.

Hezbollah said intense strikes since Wednesday were retaliation for Israel’s killing of one of its commanders.

Israeli forces responded with shelling, the military said, also announcing air strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure across the border.

The fallout from the Gaza war also escalated this week off Yemen.

On Friday the U.S. military said it destroyed two unmanned surface vessels in the Red Sea belonging to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, as well as one drone and seven radars that allowed the rebels to target ships.

In Rafah’s west, militants and Israeli troops clashed while artillery fire struck a refugee camp

Palestinian Territories:

A Gaza hospital said Sunday that an Israeli air strike targeting a house at a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory killed at least 20 people.

“We received 20 fatalities and several wounded after an Israeli air strike targeted a house belonging to the Hassan family in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza,” the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said in a statement.

Witnesses said the strike occurred around 3:00 am local time. The Israeli army said it was checking the report.

Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that the wounded included several children, and rescuers were searching for missing people trapped under the rubble.

Fierce battles and heavy Israeli bombardments have been reported in the central Nuseirat camp since the military launched a “targeted” operation focussing on the southern city of Rafah in early May.

Palestinian operatives and Israeli troops have also clashed in north Gaza’s Jabalia camp for days now.

Witnesses said several other houses were targeted in air strikes during the night across Gaza, and that air strikes and artillery shelling also hit parts of Rafah during the night.

The Israeli military said two more soldiers were killed in Gaza the previous day.

The military said 282 soldiers have been killed so far in the Gaza military campaign since the start of the ground offensive on October 27.

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Leaders of Western intelligence services said they are attuned to the potential fallout in their home countries of the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israel.

Representatives from intelligence agencies from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia — a coalition known as the “Five Eyes” — convened in California to discuss Chinese economic espionage. But the meeting unfolded against the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency is working with local law enforcement to address threats of violence against both the Jewish and Muslim communities. It is also working through its legal attache office in Tel Aviv, Israel, to locate and identify Americans who remain unaccounted for after the Oct. 7 attacks.

David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said events like the Hamas attack lead to “soul searching” about “what we know, what we knew, what we can do in our own countries” to protect against similar violence.

-AP

Palestinians in Gaza reported intense bombardments near the southern towns of Khan Younis and Rafah, where Israel ordered civilians to seek refuge, early on Tuesday.

Details of causalities were not immediately available.

Israeli bombs hit areas west and southeast of Khan Younis and west of Rafah, according to local reports. Thousands of people trying to escape Gaza are gathered in Rafah, which contains the territory’s only border crossing to Egypt, as international mediators press for a deal to allow aid in and refugees with foreign passports out.

The US hoped to break a deadlock over delivering aid to increasingly desperate civilians in besieged Gaza following a brutal attack by Hamas militants, as President Joe Biden was set to head to Israel and Jordan on Wednesday.

Aid workers warned that life in Gaza was near complete collapse because of the Israeli siege, with hundreds of thousands of people seeking shelter, ever-decreasing water supplies and power running out at hospitals.

At the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, truckloads of aid were waiting to go into the tiny, densely populated territory, and trapped civilians — many of them Palestinians with dual nationalities — were hoping desperately to get out.

Mediators were trying to reach a cease-fire to open the border, which shut down last week after Israeli airstrikes, but by early Tuesday it was unclear who was keeping the crossing closed.

Gen. Erik Kurilla, the head of US Central Command, arrived in Tel Aviv for meetings with Israeli military authorities ahead of a Biden visit planned for Wednesday to signal White House support for the country.

Biden will also travel to Jordan to meet with Arab leaders amid fears that the fighting could expand into a broader regional conflict.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who had returned to Israel after a six-country tour through Arab nations, said in Tel Aviv that the US and Israel had agreed to develop a plan to enable humanitarian aid to reach civilians in Gaza.

There were few details, but the plan would include “the possibility of creating areas to help keep civilians out of harm’s way”.

Israel maintained punishing airstrikes across Gaza as a ground invasion loomed, while Hamas militants kept up a barrage of rocket attacks, and tensions mounted near the Israel-Lebanon border.

At least 2,778 people have been killed and 9,700 wounded in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry there. More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, the vast majority civilians massacred in Hamas’ October 7 assault.

The combination of airstrikes, dwindling supplies and Israel’s mass evacuation order for the north of the Gaza Strip has thrown the tiny territory’s 2.3 million people into upheaval and caused increasing desperation.

More than 1 million Palestinians have fled their homes, and 60 per cent are now in the approximately 14-kilometer-long (8 mile) area south of the evacuation zone, according to the UN.

In Gaza, hospitals were on the verge of losing electricity, threatening the lives of thousands of patients, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes searched for bread. With taps dry, many have resorted to drinking dirty or sewage-filled water, risking the spread of disease.

The Israeli military says it is trying to clear civilians for their safety ahead of a major campaign against Hamas in Gaza’s north, where it says the militants have extensive networks of tunnels and rocket launchers. Much of Hamas’ military infrastructure is in residential areas.

Those fleeing northern Gaza still faced airstrikes in the south. Before dawn Monday, a strike in the town of Rafah collapsed a building sheltering three families who had evacuated from Gaza City. At least 12 people were killed and nine others remained buried under rubble, survivors said.

Israel evacuated towns near its northern border with Lebanon, where the military has exchanged fire repeatedly with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group. Israel fought a vicious monthlong war with Hezbollah in 2006 that ended in a stalemate and a tense detente between the two sides.

Speaking to the Israeli Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran and Hezbollah, “Don’t test us in the north. Don’t make the mistake of the past. Today, the price you will pay will be far heavier.” Soon after he spoke, the Knesset floor was evacuated as rockets headed toward Jerusalem. Sirens in Tel Aviv prompted US and Israeli officials to take shelter in a bunker, officials said.

Iran’s foreign minister, meanwhile, warned that “preemptive action is possible” if Israel moves closer to a ground offensive. Hossein Amirabdollahian’s threat followed a pattern of escalating rhetoric from Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said on Monday that at least 199 hostages were taken into Gaza, more than previously estimated. Hamas said it was holding 200 to 250 hostages.

Hamas’ military wing released a hostage video showing a dazed woman having her arm wrapped with bandages. The woman, who identified herself as Mia Schem, 21, rocked slightly as she spoke, the sound of explosions reverberating in the background. Schem was taken from Kibbutz Reim, where she was attending a rave. Hamas said she had undergone a three-hour operation.

The plight of the hostages has dominated the Israeli media since the attack, with interviews with their relatives playing on television almost constantly. Israeli officials have vowed to maintain the siege of Gaza until the hostages are released.

In Gaza, more than 400,000 displaced people in the south crowded into schools and other facilities of the UN agency for Palestinians. But the agency said it has only 1 litre of water a day for each of its staff members trapped in the territory.

“Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life,” said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, calling for a lifting of the siege. “We need this now.” Hospitals are expected to run out of generator fuel in the next 24 hours, meaning life-saving equipment like incubators and ventilators will stop functioning and putting thousands of lives at risk, the UN said.

Yet doctors and many hospital staff have refused to evacuate, saying it would mean death for critically ill patients and newborns on ventilators.

In northern Gaza, unknown numbers remained, either unwilling or unable to leave. Hamas urged people to ignore the evacuation order. The Israeli military on Sunday released photos it said showed a Hamas roadblock preventing traffic from moving south.