Eleven weeks into the Israel-Hamas war, Israeli forces pressed on with their offensive, a day after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution for more aid to flow into the besieged Gaza Strip.
Grey and black smoke rose over Khan Yunis city and footage showed smoke also drifting over the north of the coastal territory.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported 201 deaths in the past 24 hours across the territory, updating the death toll since the start of the war to 20,258, most of them women and children.
Fighting began on October 7 when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s border and killed about 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. They also took 250 hostages.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza that has displaced nearly two million and reduced much of the territory to rubble.On Saturday the army said five of its soldiers have been killed in combat, bringing to 144 the total number of troop deaths since the ground offensive on October 27.The previous day the Security Council approved a resolution demanding “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of life-saving aid to Gaza “at scale”, but it did not call for an end to the deadly fighting.
Members had wrangled for days over the wording, and at Washington’s insistence toned down some provisions.
It is still unclear what, if any, impact the vote will have on the ground.
But for Palestinians in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, more aid is not enough.
“We don’t want food, we want a ceasefire,” said Mahmud al-Shaer.
Ahmad al-Burawi, who was displaced from Beit Lahia further north, added: “We just want to return to our lands, that’s all. We want a solution” to end the war.
“People are dying,” he said.
The Gaza health ministry said dozens of Palestinians were “executed” this week in Jabalia camp and town, with spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra denouncing a “massacre”.
When contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not directly comment on the allegations but said it ensures that its “strikes against military targets comply with the provisions of international law”.
– ‘Lost contact’ with hostage guards –
The war has displaced 1.9 million out 2.4 million Gazans of Gaza’s, the UN estimates, and they have been struggling to find food, fuel in water, living in crowded shelters or tents.
Nine out Gaza’s 36 hospitals are only partially functioning, with the others put out of action altogether, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who has been pressing for a “humanitarian ceasefire” said Israel was “creating massive obstacles” to aid deliveries.
After Friday’s Security Council vote, Israel insisted the battle will go on until Hamas is “eliminated”, with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen saying the war was legal and just.
He also said the remaining 129 hostages held in Gaza must be freed.
Israelis including friends and relatives of the captives demonstrated again Saturday in Tel Aviv, demanding action to secure their release.
It came as the Hamas’s armed wing said it “lost contact” with militants tasked with guarding five hostages, including three elderly men who appeared in a video from captivity the group released this week.
“We believe that those hostages have been killed” in Israeli strikes, said spokesman Abu Obeida without providing evidence.
The Israeli army said meanwhile a Friday strike which the Palestinian health ministry said killed four members of the same family including a girl in Rafah had targeted a Hamas arms procurement official.
Hassan al-Atrash was responsible for weapons purchase and manufacturing for Hamas’s armed wing, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and helped smuggle arms into Gaza, the army said.
– Displaced again –
The Palestinian health ministry reported several strikes on Saturday, including one on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp that killed 18 Palestinians.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, a woman wept after seeing the body of a relative and a crouching man cried over a corpse in a black body bag.
“This is a genocide,” said Rafat al-Aydi, standing before bodies which lay under a bush of bright red flowers.
Israel’s allies, including the United States, have urged that civilians be spared in the fighting.
A truce took hold for just a week, mediated by Qatar, during which 80 Israeli hostages were released from Gaza captivity in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Gazans have been displaced repeatedly during the fighting, and on Friday were told by Israel to evacuate central Gaza and move south to Deir al-Balah city “for their own security”.
But UN officials have said they are still being bombed and WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said most of the displaced are going “entire days and nights without eating”.
“Famine is looming,” he said.
– Drone strike off India –
Far from Gaza, a new attack on shipping Saturday added to fears of a regional escalation.
Maritime agencies said a drone strike damaged a merchant ship in waters off Veraval, India. There was no claim of responsibility.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels have already fired drone and missiles at ships in the Red Sea, saying they are targeting Israeli-linked vessels in solidarity with Gaza.
The United States has accused Iran of involvement, but Iranian deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri on Saturday said the Huthis act on their “own decisions and capabilities”.
There also have been cross-border skirmishes between Israeli forces and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran.
