Israel shrugs off warning to spare Rafah

ISRAELI forces bombarded areas of Rafah yesterday, Palestinian residents said, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed United States President Joe Biden’s threat to withhold weapons from Israel if it assaults the southern Gaza city.

A senior Israeli official said yesterday the latest round of indirect negotiations in Cairo to halt hostilities in Gaza had ended and Israel would proceed with its operation in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip as planned.

‘‘If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails,’’ Netanyahu said in a video statement. ‘‘But we have much more than our fingernails.’’

In Gaza, Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters fired antitank rockets and mortars at Israeli tanks massed on the eastern outskirts of the city.

Residents and medics in Rafah, the biggest urban area in Gaza not yet overrun by Israeli ground forces, said an Israeli attack near a mosque killed at least three people and wounded others in the eastern Brazil neighbourhood.

Video footage showed the minaret lying in the rubble and two bodies wrapped in blankets. An Israeli air strike on two houses in the Sabra neighbourhood of Rafah killed at least 12 people including women and children.

Among the dead was a senior commander of the militant AlMujahedeen Brigades, and his family, and the family of another group leader, medics and relatives said.

Israel says Hamas militants are hiding in Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of Gazans seeking refuge from the bombardments that have reduced most of the coastal enclave to ruins.

Some 110,000 people had fled Rafah since the Israeli army started advancing on the city, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said on X yesterday.

In the US, the White House repeated its hope Israel would not launch a full operation in Rafah, saying it did not believe that would advance Israel’s aim of defeating Hamas.

‘‘Smashing into Rafah, in [President Biden’s] view, will not advance that objective,’’ spokesman John Kirby said.

Israel’s ambassador to the US said the decision to withhold weapons from Israel over Rafah sent the ‘‘wrong message’’ to Hamas and the country’s foes. ‘‘It puts us in a corner because we have to deal with Rafah one way or the other,’’ Ambassador Michael Herzog said.

The Israeli military had the required munitions for operations in Rafah and had already killed 50 Palestinian gunmen in east Rafah and uncovered several tunnels, chief armed forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

Hamas had no immediate comment.

In Cairo, delegations from Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar had been in talks until yesterday, but no deal was reached, Egyptian security sources said. — Reuters