Israeli forces on Friday struck targets across the Gaza Strip, with witnesses reporting air raids 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.

Witnesses said on Friday Israeli strikes hit the Rafah area as well as central Gaza’s Nuseirat while intense bombardment was reported in the north.

Strikes on two separate locations killed a total of 11 persons overnight, medical sources at a hospital in Deir al-Balah and the Nuseirat refugee camp reported.

The Israeli military said its forces were “operating in central Gaza”, where it earlier announced forces had found rocket launchers, weapons and “tunnel shafts”.

An air strike “targeted and eliminated” a militant in the Rafah area, the military said.

In central Gaza, further air strikes “eliminated several terrorists who operated near” troops, the military said without elaborating.

Israel, which has repeatedly vowed to destroy Hamas after the Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israel on October 7, said on Wednesday its forces had taken over the 14-km Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, where it alleges weapons were being smuggled.

Egypt, a longtime mediator in the conflict, has yet to officially comment on the Israeli takeover, which officials have previously said could violate the two countries’ 1979 peace deal.

Amid stalled diplomatic efforts towards a ceasefire, Hamas said it had informed mediators it would only agree a “comprehensive” truce agreement including a hostage-prisoner swap if Israel halts its “aggression”.

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s Qatar-based political office, reiterated in a Friday that the group’s core demands — including a permanent ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal — “are non-negotiable”.

He accused Israel of “using negotiations as a cover to continue its aggression”, saying Hamas “refuses to be a part of these manoeuvres”.

On Thursday, Israel said its forces had killed about 300 Palestinian militants in Rafah since launching its military operation in the city.

A stream of civilians fled Rafah, taking their belongings on their shoulders, in cars or on donkey-drawn carts.

Aid at sea

Before the Rafah offensive began, the United Nations said up to 1.4 million people were sheltering in the city. Since then, one million have fled the area, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said.

The United Nations has warned of looming famine in Gaza.

The Israeli seizure of the Rafah crossing has further slowed sporadic deliveries of aid for Gaza’s 2.4 million people and effectively shuttered the territory’s main exit point.

However, Israel said at the weekend that aid deliveries had been stepped up, including through its Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza.

Cyprus, the European Union’s easternmost member, said humanitarian aid shipped to Gaza was being kept at sea off the territory’s coast, after a US-built pier was damaged in bad weather.

Cypriot government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said Friday the maritime corridor was “uninterrupted” and the pier would be “back on track” within days.

“Our goal… is to be able to help half a million people per month, and we think that this goal is achievable,” he said.

In an interview on French channel LCI, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as “anti-Semitic slander” accusations Israel was deliberately targeting and starving Gazan civilians.

Mr. Netanyahu said the ratio of militants to civilians killed so far in the Israeli offensive was “the lowest rate we have seen in an urban war”.

Car, house hit

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,224 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

A medical official at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah said eight people, including two children, were killed in an air strike that hit a house in Al-Bureij refugee camp.

Another source at Nuseirat’s Al-Awda Hospital reported three deaths in a strike on a car.

An AFP correspondent saw Israeli military vehicles southwest of Gaza City, in the territory’s north.

The military announced the deaths of two soldiers in Gaza, taking to 294 the number of Israeli troops killed since the start of ground operations in late October.

An Israeli strike Sunday that sparked a fire and killed dozens in a displacement camp in Rafah drew a wave of fresh condemnation and prompted two days of discussions at the UN Security Council.

Israel has said it targeted a Hamas compound and killed two senior members.

After the strike, Algeria presented 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.

This handout satellite image courtesy of Maxar Technologies shows a view of the displacement camp in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, near a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) facility, on May 29, 2024. A strike on Tal Al-Sultan late on May 26 that Israel said targeted Hamas militants killed 45 people, according to Palestinian officials.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The loss of Palestinian lives in the recent Israeli bombing of Rafah is “heartbreaking”, India said on Thursday.

Nearly 45 Palestinians, including children, were killed when Israeli bombs hit tents housing displaced persons in Rafah on May 26. The Indian stand on the carnage was shared by the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, Randhir Jaiswal, during the weekly press briefing.

He also highlighted that India had recognised the Palestinian state way back in the late 1980s.

“The heartbreaking loss of civilian lives in the displacement camp in Rafah is a matter of deep concern. We have consistently called for protection of civilian population and respect for international humanitarian law in the ongoing conflict. We also note that the Israeli side has already accepted responsibility for it as a tragic accident and announced an investigation into the incident,” said Mr. Jaiswal.

Two-state solution

The bombing of the tents that housed displaced Gazans heightened the global outrage against the ongoing Israeli campaign in the Gaza Strip that has so far killed more than 36,000 people. This incident coincided with Spain, Ireland and Norway granting recognition to the Palestinian state. In response to a question, Mr. Jaiswal reiterated India’s support for a “two-state solution” to the Israel-Palestinian crisis.

“We have long supported a two-state solution, which entails the establishment of a sovereign, viable, and independent state of Palestine within recognised and mutually agreed borders, living side by side with Israel in peace,” said Mr. Jaiswal when asked about the move by Ireland, Norway and Spain.

‘Objective view’ in Pakistan

The official spokesperson also took note of the remarks by former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that Islamabad had violated the 1999 Lahore pact signed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mr. Sharif on February 21, 1999, However, months later, the Kargil war broke out.

“You are aware of our position on the issue. I need not have to reiterate that. We note that there is an objective view emerging in Pakistan as well on this matter,” Mr. Jaiswal said to a question during the interaction.

Earlier acknowledging that Pakistani missteps in 1999 that hurt the prospects of peace between India and Pakistan, Mr. Sharif said on Wednesday, “On May 28, 1998, Pakistan carried out five nuclear tests. After that Vajpayee saheb came here and we made an agreement. But we violated that agreement….it was our fault,” Mr. Sharif said, after he became the president of the PML-N for six years.  

After taking charge, the former PM, who also participated in the “mini SAARC summit” of May 2014 in Delhi, presented his version of the events that took place in Pakistan over the past three decades. He said the U.S. government under President Bill Clinton tried to stop Pakistan from going nuclear and offered $5 billion for ensuring that, but he had rejected the offer and went ahead with nuclear tests at Chagai range in Balochistan on May 28, 1998, after the Pokhran nuclear blasts by India on May 11, 1998.

India-Pakistan ties have been frozen in animosity since 2016 after India blamed Pakistan-based terror outfits for attacking military installations in Pathankot and Uri, following which India carried out a “surgical strike” along the Line of Control.

Palestinians walk by a residential building destroyed in an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on March 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Israel struck one of the largest residential towers in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 9, residents said, stepping up pressure on the last area of the enclave it has not yet invaded and where over a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

The 12-floor building, located some 500m from the border with Egypt, was damaged in the strike. Dozens of families were made homeless though no casualties were reported, according to residents. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident.

One of the tower’s 300 residents told Reuters that Israel gave them a 30-minute warning to flee the building at night.

“People were startled, running down the stairs, some fell, it was chaos. People left their belongings and money,” said Mohammad Al-Nabrees, adding that among those who tripped down the stairs during the panicked evacuation was a friend’s pregnant wife.

A Rafah-based official with the Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority that has limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, another Palestinian territory, said he feared that hitting the Rafah tower was a sign of an imminent Israeli invasion.

Five months into Israel’s unrelenting air and ground assault on Gaza, health authorities said nearly 31,000 Palestinians had been killed, over 72,500 were wounded and thousands were trapped under rubble.

The offensive has plunged the Palestinian territory, already reeling from a 17-year Israel-led blockade, into a humanitarian catastrophe. Much of it has been reduced to rubble and most of the 2.3 million population have been displaced, with the U.N. warning of disease and starvation.

Three Palestinian children died of dehydration and malnutrition at the northern Al Shifa Hospital overnight, said Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra. Mr. Qidra said this raised to 23 the number of Palestinians who had died of similar causes in nearly 10 days.

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“This brutal war has ruptured any sense of a shared humanity,” said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

She called for an end of hostilities to allow for meaningful aid distribution in Gaza, for Hamas to release all hostages without conditions and for Israel to treat Palestinians in its custody humanely and to permit them to contact their families.

The war was triggered by an October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, where 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of 134 hostages still in Gaza seemed to stall ahead of the hoped-for deadline, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on or around March 10.

A Hamas source told Reuters that the group’s delegation was “unlikely” to make another visit to Cairo over the weekend for talks. Hamas blamed the lack of progress on Israel, which has so far refused to give guarantees or commitments to end the war or pull out forces from the Gaza Strip.

In a speech marking Martyrs’ and Veterans’ Day in Egypt on March 9, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the cost of rebuilding Gaza could exceed $90 billion.

In a statement summarizing its operations in Gaza over the past day, the Israeli military said it conducted arrests, located weapons and killed over 30 fighters in Khan Younis, including in the Hamad area, in central Gaza and in the area of Beit Hanoun in the north.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 82 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip in the last day.

In Khan Younis, medics said at least 23 people were killed in military raids on homes and in Israeli shelling of a housing project in the Hamad area of the city. In the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli fire killed a Palestinian fisherman along the beach, medics said.