Defence Minister says operation is necessary to flush out terrorists
Israel are pushing into Gaza to “seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones.” Hostage families have slammed the move, fearing they won’t get their loved ones back.
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Israel has launched a major air and ground offensive in Gaza drawing condemnation from both the international community and the families of hostages.
Media in Palestine have reported heavy strikes in Rafah and Khas Younis overnight, killing 34 people, followed by grounds troops advancing in Rafah.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would bolster its military presence in the Palestinian territory to “destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”.
The operation would “seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones”, he said in a statement, without specifying how much territory.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 19 people were killed, including nine children, when an Israeli strike “targeted an UNRWA (UN agency for Palestinian refugees) building housing a medical clinic in Jabalia refugee camp”.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it struck Hamas militants “inside a command and control centre” in north Gaza’s Jabalia. It separately confirmed to AFP the building housed a UN clinic.
The Palestinian foreign ministry, based in the occupied West Bank, condemned the “massacre at the UNRWA clinic in Jabalia” and called for “serious international pressure” to halt Israel’s widening offensive.
Israel has on several occasions conducted strikes on UNRWA buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, citing Hamas militants hiding there as the reason.
Israel also carried out deadly air strikes in southern and central Gaza on Wednesday.
The civil defence agency said dawn strikes killed at least 13 people in Khan Yunis and two in Nuseirat refugee camp.
Katz warned last week that the military would soon “operate with full force” in more parts of Gaza.
Britain were among the first to condemn the move.
“We are deeply concerned about the resumption of hostilities in Gaza. The UK does not support an expansion of Israel’s military operations,” junior foreign office minister Hamish Falconer, told parliament.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum also issued a statement slamming the decision.
“(We) were horrified to wake up this morning to the defence minister’s announcement that the military operation in Gaza would be expanded for the purpose of ‘capturing extensive territory,’” the statement reads.
“Has it been decided to sacrifice the hostages for the sake of ‘territorial gains?’
“Instead of securing the release of the hostages through a deal and ending the war, the Israeli government is sending more soldiers into Gaza to fight in the same areas where battles have already taken place repeatedly.”
Hamas and its allies still hold 59 hostages, 35 of who are believed to already be dead.
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UN SLAMS ISRAEL FOR AID WORKER DEATHS
United Nations officials have harshly condemned an Israel army attack on an emergency convoy that killed 15 aid workers and medical personnel, demanding an investigation after their bodies were discovered in what the agency described as a “mass grave”.
“This is a huge blow to us … These people were shot,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid co-ordination office, OCHA.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had recovered the bodies of eight of its medics, six members of Gaza’s civil defence agency and on UN employee. One Red Crescent medic remains missing.
“I condemn the attack by the Israeli army on a medical and emergency convoy on 23 March resulting in the killing of 15 medical personnel and humanitarian workers in Gaza,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement.
“The subsequent discovery of their bodies eight days later in Rafah, buried near their clearly marked destroyed vehicles, is deeply disturbing,” he added.
“This raises significant questions with regard to the conduct of the Israeli army during and in the aftermath of the incident.”
TEEN HELD WITHOUT CHARGE DIES IN ISRAELI JAIL
A 17-year-old boy held without charge for six months in an Israeli prison has died after collapsing in unclear circumstances, Palestinian officials have said.
The family of Walid Ahmad, arrested last September for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, claims he contracted amoebic dysentery from the unsanitary conditions in the prison.
Citing witnesses, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority’s detainee commission told AP that Walid had collapsed and hit his head on a metal rod, losing consciousness.
“The prison administration did not respond to the prisoners’ requests for urgent care to save his life,” he said.
In a statement, the Israeli prison service said an investigation was under way.
“A 17-year-old security detainee from Megiddo prison, from the West Bank area, passed away yesterday in the prison, with his medical condition being under privacy protection,” it said. “An investigation is still ongoing.”
DEADLY ATTACK ON HEZBOLLAH STRONGHOLD
A Hezbollah official was among four people killed in an Israeli strike on south Beirut, Israel and a Hezbollah source said, the second such raid during a fragile four-month ceasefire.
Lebanon’s leaders condemned the attack, which came without warning in the early hours of the morning during the Eid al-Fitr Muslim holiday marking the end of the Ramadan fasting period.
It struck after Israel raided Beirut’s southern suburbs — a stronghold of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group — after issuing an evacuation warning.
Lebanon’s health ministry said four people, including a woman, were killed in the latest strike.
Israel’s military confirmed it killed Bdair in a joint statement with the Shin Bet domestic security agency.
The statement said Bdair “recently operated in co-operation with the Hamas terrorist organisation, directed Hamas terrorists, and assisted them in planning and advancing a significant and imminent terror attack against Israeli civilians”.
It did not elaborate.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the strike and called on his country’s allies to support “our right to full sovereignty”.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the attack was a “clear breach” of a ceasefire deal that largely ended more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah politician Ibrahim Musawi said Lebanese authorities must take high-level measures “to guarantee the safety of the Lebanese”.
The raid came just days after Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs in response to unclaimed rocket fire from Lebanon which it blamed on the Lebanese militant group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned the country’s military would “strike everywhere in Lebanon against any threat” in response.
TRUMP UPBEAT ABOUT EGYPT CALL
US President Donald Trump said he had a positive conversation with Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on issues including Gaza, where Washington has proposed displacement of the population.
“My telephone call with President El-Sisi, of Egypt, went very well,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, using another spelling for the Egyptian leader’s name.
He said that the two spoke about the “tremendous military progress” by the United States in strikes against Yemen’s Huthi insurgents, who have been attacking Red Sea shipping in professed solidarity with the Palestinians.
Mr Trump said, without explanation, that “also discussed was Gaza, and possible solutions, Military preparedness, etc.”
Mr Trump stunned the region in February by proposing the mass displacement of war-ravaged Gaza’s population. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced support for the idea and has resumed a blistering military campaign in Gaza, from which Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Egypt, which borders Gaza, came up with its own plan that would finance reconstruction of the territory. The US State Department replied at the time that it did not meet Washington’s expectations.
Mr Trump has had close relations with Sisi, famously being reported to have called him “my favourite dictator” during a meeting in 2019.
Egypt has been one of the top recipients of US aid since it became the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel, with Washington brushing aside human rights concerns including what rights groups say is the detention of tens of thousands of political prisoners under Sisi’s rule.
The United States gives more than $1 billion in military assistance a year to Egypt, with Mr Trump exempting it from sweeping cuts in US aid.
– with AFP
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