Israel charges back into Gaza City, US vows ‘all necessary actions’ after troops killed
Israel launched an assault on Gaza’s biggest city, weeks after pulling back from it, while Washington vowed yesterday to take “all necessary actions” to defend its troops after a deadly attack in Jordan, the first U.S. military deaths in the Middle East since the Gaza war began.
A day after three U.S. service members in Jordan were killed and at least 34 wounded in what Washington called a drone attack by Iran-backed militants, President Joe Biden’s administration was under pressure to respond firmly without triggering a wider war.
“The president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces and we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops,” Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday at the Pentagon.
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said: “We don’t want a wider war with Iran. We don’t want a wider war in the region, but we got to do what we have to do.”
Iran has denied any role. Biden has previously ordered retaliatory attacks on Iran-backed groups but has so far stopped short of hitting Iran directly.
“Have no doubt - we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing,” Biden said on Sunday.
In northern Gaza, residents said air strikes on Monday on neighbourhoods across Gaza City, the enclave’s biggest city, killed and wounded many people. While Israeli tanks shelled eastern areas of the city, naval vessels fired at beachfront areas in the west, they said.
Israel said late last year that it had largely completed operations in northern Gaza and has recently aimed the brunt of its might at southern Gaza. The renewed push in Gaza City, where residents reported fierce gun battles near the main Al-Shifa Hospital, suggested that the war was not going to plan.
Among those killed were two Palestinian journalists, Essam Ellulu and Hussein Attalah, and several members of their families, health officials and the journalists’ union said.
Hamas, for its part, fired its first volley of rockets for weeks into Israeli cities, proving that the militant group running Gaza still had the capability to launch them after nearly four months of war.
The Israeli military said it shot down six of 15 rockets. There were no reports of any casualties in Israel, where air raid sirens and explosions of interceptions sounded.
Gazans said the violence in the enclave made a mockery of a World Court ruling last week calling on Israel to do more to help civilians. Gaza health officials say 26,637 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict with thousands more bodies likely under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
“The war continues in a dirtier manner,” said Gaza City resident and Palestinian human rights activist Mustafa Ibrahim, displaced with his family in Rafah near the southern border with Egypt, along with more than a million other Gazans.
Israel ordered new evacuations of the most populated areas of Gaza City, but people said communications blackouts meant many would miss the alerts. Israel says Hamas is responsible for the deaths of civilians because its fighters operate among them, which the fighters deny.
People in the north have been grinding animal feed to make flour after flour, rice and sugar ran out, part of an aid crisis now potentially exacerbated by a withdrawal of support for the United Nations’ aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
The United States and several other countries have suspended aid to the agency since Friday after Israel said 13 of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met the head of U.N. internal investigations to ensure an inquiry into the allegations “will be done swiftly and as efficiently as possible,” a U.N. spokesperson said.
The Israeli report, seen by Reuters, said 190 UNRWA staff were militants and named 11.