Battle rages at Gaza hospital
As UN reports ‘catastrophic’ hunger
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) – Fighting raged on Monday in and around the besieged Gaza Strip’s largest hospital complex where Israel said its forces killed and arrested Hamas militants, as Palestinians fled by foot under heavy bombardment.
The US separately said that Israel had killed the deputy leader of Hamas’ armed wing, making him the most senior militant killed inside the territory during the war.
While the raid at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital was underway, Israel sent its spy chief to Qatar for renewed truce talks and top ally, the US, urged an “alternative” to a looming ground invasion of the southern city of Rafah.
The devastating war since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel has left roughly half of Gazans – around 1.1 million people – experiencing “catastrophic” hunger, a UN-backed food security assessment warned.
The expert report is “exhibit A for the need for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” said UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres, decrying an “entirely man-made disaster.”
Gaza’s soaring civilian death toll and large-scale destruction have hardened global opposition to Israel’s military operation and siege, including accusations of deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has not softened his war objectives.
In a phone call with US President Joe Biden, Netanyahu reiterated a commitment “to achieving all of the war’s objectives” – eliminating Hamas, freeing all hostages and “ensuring that Gaza will never present a threat to Israel,” his office said.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Israel’s military campaign had turned Gaza into the world’s biggest “open-air graveyard,” and that Israel was using famine as a “weapon of war.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz countered that “Israel allows extensive humanitarian aid into Gaza” and accused Borrell of “attacking Israel.”
With tensions rising between Israel and the US over the war’s impact on civilians, Biden and Netanyahu spoke for the first time in over a month.
The White House said the two leaders discussed “efforts to surge humanitarian assistance to Gaza” and “the situation in Rafah,” where about 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in crowded conditions near the Egyptian border.