Israel hits Rafah despite US warning on arms transfers, martyrs' toll at 34,904
RAFAH, Palestine (AFP) - Smoke rose from strikes on Gaza's crowded southern city of Rafah Thursday after US President Joe Biden vowed to stop supplying artillery shells and other weapons to Israel if a full-scale offensive into the city goes ahead.
It was the starkest warning yet from the United States, Israel's main military provider, over the civilian impact of its war against Hamas Palestinian militants. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said that at least 34,904 people have been martyred in the Palestinian territory during the war between Israel and Hamas militants.
The tally includes at least 60 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 78,514 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war broke out when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7.
An AFP correspondent and witnesses on Thursday reported strikes on several parts of Rafah, where the United Nations said 1.4 million people were sheltering. "The tanks and jets are striking," Tarek Bahlul said on a deserted Rafah street. "Every minute you hear a rocket and you don't know where it will land."
Israel has already defied international objections by sending in tanks and conducting what it called "targeted raids" in eastern Rafah, the city it says is home to Hamas's last remaining battalions. In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop some US weapons supplies to Israel if it carried out its long-threatened major Rafah ground offensive. Israel on Thursday called Biden's comments "very disappointing".
Biden told CNN: "If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used... to deal with the cities." "We're not gonna supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used."
Asked about Israel's action already in Rafah, Biden said "they haven't gone in the population centres".
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UNRWA said the Kerem Shalom crossing -- which Israel shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday -- remained closed. Late Wednesday, the army said a soldier was lightly wounded when rockets again targeted Kerem Shalom.
The Hamas authorities' "emergency committee" in Rafah said Thursday Israel's "control of the Rafah crossing and its closure, along with the halt of aid and fuel supplies, threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian, environmental, and health catastrophe". It dismissed as "nothing but lies" Israel's description of its Rafah operation as "limited".
Another Hamas official said Israel's operations in Rafah and the border crossing "aim to obstruct the efforts of the mediators" at Cairo truce talks. The World Health Organization said Wednesday hospitals in southern Gaza had only three days of fuel left. Fuel is critical to aid operations, not only for powering hospital equipment but also enabling aid workers to move, and to keep bakeries running, said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories. At a makeshift refugee camp in Rafah, Mazen al-Shami said she was fed up.
"We have no money and we don't have the means to move from one place to another again and again. We have no means at all," Shami said. Alongside the strikes in Rafah, Israel's military on Thursday said air strikes had hit around 25 targets in the Zeitun area of Gaza City, north Gaza. Talks involving Qatari, US and Hamas delegations aimed at cementing a long-stalled ceasefire deal would continue Thursday in Cairo, said Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence.
It added, citing an informed source, that Islamic Jihad, which is fighting alongside Hamas, and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, were also participating and "are open" to reaching a deal.
