A Palestinian child wounded in Israeli bombardment is treated in a hospital in Deir al Balah, south of the Gaza Strip. Photo / AP
The United States and Arab partners disagreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as Israeli military strikes killed multiple civilians at a UN shelter and a hospital in a growing assault on the besieged enclave’s Hamas rulers.
Large columns of smoke rose as Israel’s military said it had encircled Gaza City, the target of its offensive to crush Hamas. The Gaza Health Ministry has said more than 9400 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and that number is likely to rise as the assault continues.
“Anyone in Gaza City is risking their life,” Israel’s Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant said, adding that Hamas fighters were “encountering the full force” of Israeli troops.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan a day after talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there could be no temporary ceasefire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Arab countries want an immediate ceasefire, saying “the whole region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come.”
Blinken, however, said “it is our view now that a cease-fire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7.” He said humanitarian pauses can be critical in protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out, “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas.”
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut that Blinken “should stop the aggression and should not come up with ideas that cannot be implemented”. The spokesman of the Hamas military wing, who goes by Abu Obeida, said in a speech that fighters had destroyed 24 Israeli vehicles and inflicted casualties in the past two days.
Egyptian officials said they and Qatar were proposing humanitarian pauses for six to 12 hours daily to allow aid in and casualties to be evacuated. They were also asking for Israel to release a number of women and elderly prisoners in exchange for hostages held by Hamas, suggestions Israel seemed unlikely to accept. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the press on the discussions.
Israel has repeatedly demanded that northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents flee south, and on Saturday it offered a three-hour window for residents to do so. An AP journalist on the road, however, saw nobody coming. The head of the government media office in Gaza, Salama Maarouf, said no one went south because the Israeli military had damaged the road.
But Israel asserted that Hamas “exploited” the window to move south and attack its forces. There was no immediate Hamas comment on that claim, which was impossible to verify.
Some Palestinians said they didn’t flee because they feared Israeli bombardment.
“We don’t trust them,” said Mohamed Abed, who sheltered with his wife and children on the grounds of Shifa hospital, one of thousands of Palestinians seeking safety at medical centres in the north.
Swaths of residential neighbourhoods in northern Gaza have been levelled in airstrikes. UN monitors say more than half of northern Gaza’s remaining residents, estimated at around 300,000, are sheltering in UN-run facilities. But deadly Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit and damaged those shelters. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said it has lost contact with many in the north.
On Saturday, two strikes hit a UN school-turned-shelter housing thousands just north of Gaza City, killing several people in tents in the schoolyard and women who were baking bread inside the building, according to the UN agency.
Initial reports indicated that 20 people were killed, said spokeswoman Juliette Touma. The health ministry in Gaza reported that 15 people were killed at the school and another 70 wounded.
Also Saturday, two people were killed in a strike by the gate of Nasser Hospital in Gaza City, according to Medhat Abbas, health ministry spokesman. And a strike hit near the entrance to the emergency ward of Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, injuring at least 21, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
The World Health Organisation called attacks on health care in Gaza “unacceptable.”
Also hit was the family home of Hamas’ exiled leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Shati refugee camp on the northern edge of Gaza City, according to the Hamas-run media office in Gaza. It had no immediate details on damage or casualties.
Israel has continued bombing in the south, saying it is striking Hamas targets.
An airstrike early Saturday destroyed the home of a family in the southern town of Khan Younis, with first responders pulling three bodies and six injured people from the rubble. Among those killed was a child, according to an Associated Press cameraman at the scene.
“The sound of explosions never stops,” said Raed Mattar, a resident who was sheltering in a school in Khan Younis after fleeing the north.
At least 1,115 Palestinian dual nationals and wounded have exited Gaza into Egypt, but on Saturday authorities in Gaza didn’t allow foreign passport holders to leave because Israel was preventing the evacuation of Palestinian patients for treatment in Egypt, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority.
The UN said about 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70 per cent of the population, have fled their homes.
Food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities is running out. Aid trucks allowed into Gaza in recent days have contained far more body bags than canned food, the Palestinian Crossings Authority spokesman said.
Anger over the war and civilian deaths in Gaza sparked large demonstrations in Paris, Washington, London, Pakistan and elsewhere on Saturday. “Against apartheid, free Palestinians,” a banner in Rome read.
Thousands of Israelis protested outside Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem, urging him to resign and calling for the return of roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas. Netanyahu has refused to take responsibility for the October 7 attack.
Turkey announced it was recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultations, and Turkish media reported that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he could no longer speak to Netanyahu in light of the bombardment.
Fears continued of a new front opening along Israel’s border with Lebanon. The Israeli military said it had struck militant cells in Lebanon trying to fire at Israel, as well as an observation post for Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas. Throughout the war, Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire almost daily along the border.
“We are not interested in a northern front, but we are prepared for any task,” Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, said after touring the northern border. He said the Air Force is “preserving most of its might for the Lebanon front,” according to a video statement released by his office Saturday.
Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza are more than 3900 Palestinian children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown of civilians and fighters.
More than 1400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack. The Israeli military confirmed that four more soldiers have died during the Gaza ground operation, bringing the death toll to 28.
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