Israel bombs Gaza as oldest woman held hostage confirmed dead
JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israeli forces on Thursday battled Hamas in Gaza where air strikes and urban combat rocked the southern city of Khan Yunis, near where many hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.
UN World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for "urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril" facing besieged Gaza's people, including "terrible injuries, acute hunger and... severe risk of disease."
In Jerusalem, families of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza again rallied for their release, and a kibbutz announced that a 70-year-old Us-israeli thought to be the oldest woman held captive had died in the October 7 attacks.
US President Joe Biden said he was "devastated" by the news Judith Weinstein Haggai was dead, and pledged that Washington will "not stop working" with its ally Israel to bring the remaining hostages home.
The war, which started with Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, has left much of northern Gaza in ruins while the battlefront has shifted ever further to the south of the besieged territory.
The Israeli army said it had deployed an additional brigade to Khan
Yunis, hometown of Hamas's Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, where AFP correspondents reported sustained air and artillery strikes.
The Palestinian Red Crescent society reported that shelling had killed at least 10 people near the city's Al-amal hospital, an area where it said about 14,000 people are sheltering.
Later Thursday, Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry said 20 people were killed, most of them women and children, and dozens wounded in shelling of the Shaboura camp in the southern city of Rafah.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack which left about 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Hamas on October 7 also took 250 hostages, more than half of whom remain captive — a source of intense anxiety for their families who protested in Jerusalem with the demand to "bring them home."
Israel's relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children, according to Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry.