Rafah strikes raise fears of Israeli ground assault
Seven Lebanese and an Israeli killed in batle along the Lebanon-israel border: Official; US, UK impose sanctions on Hamas-linked fundraising network
Israel bombed at least four homes in Rafah on Wednesday, raising new fear among the more than a million Palestinians sheltering in the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip that a long-threatened ground assault could be coming.
One of the airstrikes killed 11 people from a single family, health officials said.
Another Israeli airstrike in Rafah on Wednesday aternoon killed four Palestinians including a woman and a child and injured other residents, Gaza health authorities said.
Just west of Gaza City in the enclave’s north, seven people were killed in an airstrike on a house, health officials said.
Separately, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where bloodshed has worsened in parallel with the Gaza war, three Palestinians were killed and four wounded by Israeli fire during a raid in Jenin overnight, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Israeli forces pounded besieged Gaza on Wednesday in the war sparked by the October 7 atack and fought Hamas around several hospitals despite a UN Security Council demand for a ceasefire. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 66 people were killed in overnight bombardment and combat.
The health ministry said on Wednesday that at least 32,490 people have been killed in the territory since war began on Oct.7, 2024.
Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari has said that, although the CIA and Mossad chiefs had let Doha, the ceasefire talks were “ongoing” at a technical level.
Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad charged that Israel “is being intransigent and wants to keep the war going”.
“There hasn’t been any progress in ceasefire talks or negotiations for prisoners’ exchange,” he said.
Israel has also exchanged daily cross-border fire with Hamas ally Hizbollah in Lebanon.
Hizbollah fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel on Wednesday killing a civilian, ater Israel carried out a deadly pre-dawn strike in south Lebanon.
The overnight Israeli strike killed seven people who were “waiting to respond to a rescue call, and ended up geting hit by missiles,” said Muheddine Qarhani, head of the Emergency and Relief Corps.
Israel wants to reschedule talks in Washington to discuss a possible offensive in the Gaza city of Rafah, days ater it canceled the trip in protest at a UN ceasefire resolution, a US official said Wednesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily scrapped the visit on Monday ater Israel’s closest ally, the United States, abstained on the UN Security Council vote, allowing it to pass and deepening talk of a rit with President Joe Biden.
But ater the White House said it was “perplexed” by the move, Israel backtracked.
“The prime minister’s office has said they’d like to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah. We are now working with them to set a convenient date,” the senior administration official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Separately, US and UK authorities unveiled sanctions on Wednesday against two people and three companies related to the popular media channel Gaza Now over its fundraising efforts in support of Hamas.
US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control says that ater the Oct. 7 atack by Hamas against Israel - the online entity began a fundraising effort in support of Hamas.
Gaza Now’s Arabic channel has more than 300,000 followers on social media channel X, formerly known as Twiter, and a large following on the encrypted chat plaform Telegram.
Spanish military planes air dropped 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Madrid called on Israel to open land border crossings to prevent a famine, the Foreign Ministry said.
The operation, carried out in coordination with Jordan and co-financed by the European Union, dropped more than 11,000 food rations to alleviate the “catastrophic levels of food insecurity” faced by up to 1.1 million people in Gaza, the ministry said in a statement.
“Spain insists on the opening of the land crossings as an indispensable measure to avoid a famine situation,” it added.