Rafah:

Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday killed at least 17 Palestinians in two of the Gaza Strip’s historic refugee camps and Israeli tanks pushed deeper into the enclave’s southern city of Rafah, residents and medics said.

Residents reported heavy bombardments from tanks and planes in several areas of Rafah, where more than a million people had taken refuge before May. Most of the population has fled northwards since then as Israeli forces invaded the city.

“Rafah is being bombed without any intervention from the world, the occupation (Israel) is acting freely here,” a Rafah resident and father of six told Reuters via a chat app.

Israeli tanks were operating inside Tel Al-Sultan, Al-Izba, and Zurub areas in Rafah’s west, as well as Shaboura at the heart of the city. They also continued to occupy the eastern neighbourhoods and outskirts as well as the border with Egypt and the vital Rafah border crossing.

“There are Israeli forces in most areas, there is heavy resistance too and they are making them pay dearly but the occupation is not ethical and they are destroying the city and the refugee camp,” the resident said.

Palestinian health officials said one man was killed in the morning by Israeli fire on the eastern side of Rafah. Medics said they believed many others had been killed in the past days and weeks but rescue teams could not reach them.

The Israeli military said it was continuing “precise, intelligence-based activity” in Rafah, killing many Palestinian gunmen over the past day in close-range combat and seized weapons. The air force struck dozens of targets across the Gaza Strip in the past day, it added.

In the central Gaza Strip, two separate Israeli air strikes on two houses killed 17 Palestinians in Al-Nuseirat and Al-Bureij, two designated refugee camps that are home to families and descendants of people who fled to Gaza in the 1948 war around the creation of Israel, medics said.

“Every more hour of delay, Israel kills more people, we want a ceasefire now,” said Khalil, 45, a teacher from Gaza, now displaced with his family in Deir Al-Balah city in the central Gaza Strip.

“Enough of our blood, I say it to Israel, America, and our leaders too. The war must stop,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

The Israeli military statement did not comment directly on the 17 deaths but said forces continued to operate against factions in central Gaza areas.

The commander of an Islamic Jihad sniper cell was killed by an Israeli warplane, and troops also “eliminated” a militnt cell, it said.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said fighters confronted Israeli forces in combat zones with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, and have in some areas detonated pre-planted explosive devices against army units.

Israel’s ground and air campaign was triggered when Hamas stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The offensive has left Gaza in ruins, killing more than 37,400 people, according to its health authorities, and left much of the population homeless and destitute.

Since a week-long truce in November, repeated attempts to arrange a ceasefire have failed, with Hamas insisting on a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu refuses to end the war before Hamas is eradicated and the hostages are freed.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Rafah:

Gaza officials said Israeli strikes on a centre for displaced people killed dozens in a “massacre” near the southern city of Rafah on Sunday, while the Israeli army said it had targeted Hamas operatives.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said in a statement that the strikes “claimed the lives of 35 martyrs and left dozens injured, most of them children and women”.

The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza earlier said the strike hit a centre run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees near Rafah, branding it a “horrific massacre”.

Israel’s army said its aircraft “struck a Hamas compound in Rafah”, killing Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, both senior officials for the Palestinian Hamas group in the occupied West Bank.

It added that it was “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.”

Israel’s army said Sunday at least eight rockets were fired towards central areas of the country from Rafah, with strikes targeting the commercial hub of Tel Aviv for the first time in months.

Fighting has recently centred on Rafah, where Israel’s military launched a ground operation in early May despite widespread opposition over concerns for civilians sheltering there.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its ambulance crews transported “a large number” of people killed and injured in the Rafah strikes.

The Palestinian presidency in the West Bank called it a “heinous massacre”, accusing Israeli forces of “deliberately targeting” the tents of displaced people.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed and wounded at least 50 people in the area, where it said 100,000 displaced people live.

Hamas said Palestinians must “rise up and march” against the Israeli army’s “massacre” in Rafah.

‘Strong Palestinian Authority’

Netanyahu vowed to pursue the offensive ahead of a war cabinet meeting amid intense diplomacy to forge a truce and a hostage-release deal.

He has long rejected Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the conflict triggered by the Palestinian Hamas group’s October 7 attack.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the war cabinet would “discuss a hostage release deal” on Sunday.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu’s office said Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, “continues to demand the end of the war, the withdrawal of the IDF (army) from the Gaza Strip and leaving Hamas in place, so that it will be able to carry out the atrocities of October 7 again and again”.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly opposes this,” a statement said.

EU members Ireland and Spain, and also Norway, have said they will recognise the State of Palestine from Tuesday, drawing furious Israeli condemnation.

“In order to make peace, we need a strong Palestinian Authority, not a weaker one,” said the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who met in Brussels with Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Mustafa.

Mustafa, whose government is based in the occupied West Bank, said the “first priority” was to support the people in Gaza, especially through a ceasefire, and then “rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Authority” in the territory after Hamas seized it from the PA in 2007.

US President Joe Biden has pushed for renewed international efforts to halt the war, now in its eighth month.

The Israeli official had said Saturday that “there is an intention to renew these talks this week” after negotiations involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators stalled in early May.

Pressure on Israel

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Hamas operatives 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 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

As the war grinds on, the families of hostages still held by operatives have piled pressure on Netanyahu to secure a deal to free them.

Washington has also taken a tougher line with its close ally as outrage over the war and US support for Israel has become a major issue for Biden, seeking re-election in a battle against Donald Trump.

Strikes on Tel Aviv

Hamas’s armed wing said Sunday that it targeted Tel Aviv “with a large rocket barrage in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians”.

“Hamas launched these rockets from near two mosques in Rafah,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

“Hamas is holding our hostages in Rafah, which is why we have been conducting a precise operation” there.

The United Nations has warned of looming famine in besieged Gaza, where most hospitals are no longer functioning.

Last Monday, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister as well as for three top Hamas figures.

And on Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive or any other operation there that could bring about “the physical destruction” of the Palestinians.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)