Israel pounds Gaza Strip as martyrs' toll climbs to 27,238
GAZA, Palestine (AFP) - Israel pressed its blistering assault in the Gaza Strip on Saturday as fears grew of a push into Rafah, the southern city teeming with civilians uprooted by the nearly four-month war.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Saturday at least 27,238 people have been martyred in the territory during the war between Palestinian militants and Israel. The latest toll includes 107 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, while another 66,452 people have been wounded in Gaza since the war broke out on October 7.
A constant barrage of air strikes and tank fire rocked Khan Yunis during the night, an AFP journalist said of the main city in southern Gaza that has been the focus of the Israeli offensive.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the fierce fighting have fled south to Rafah since the outbreak of the war, with their tents cramming spaces along streets and in parks. The city that had been home to 200,000 people now hosts more than half of Gaza's 2.4 million population, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
Witnesses in Rafah said 12 people were killed in an air strike on a house owned by the Hijazi family. "They bombed without any warning," said 45-year-old Bilal Jad, a neighbour whose house was damaged in the attack. "There's no safe place anywhere. The air strikes are everywhere."
Civilians who fled to Rafah have been pushed up against the border with Egypt, trying to avoid parts of the city exposed to the fighting in nearby Khan Yunis. One of them, Abdulkarim Misbah, said he fled his home in Jabalia refugee camp in the north and reached Khan Yunis, only to be uprooted once more. "We escaped last week from death in Khan Yunis, without bringing anything with us," the 32-year-old said.
'Pressure cooker of despair'
The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said it was deeply concerned about the escalation of hostilities in Khan Yunis, which has pushed more and more people south. "Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next," said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had warned on Thursday that the military was set to train its sights on Rafah.
"We are achieving our missions in Khan Yunis, and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate terror elements that threaten us," he said in a video message the defence ministry sent to journalists. The fighting has devastated the narrow coastal strip, while an Israeli siege has resulted in dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines.
New push for truce
Image analysis released Friday by the UN satellite centre UNITAR based on footage collected on January 6 and 7 showed "approximately 30 percent" of Gaza's structures had been affected by the war. The soaring civilian death toll in Gaza, as well as fears among Israelis over the fate of the hostages, have fuelled calls for a ceasefire.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East yet again in the coming days to press a new proposal involving the release of Israeli hostages in return for a pause in the fighting, the State Department said. Blinken will visit Qatar and Egypt -- the mediators of the proposal -- as well as Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia starting Sunday, it added.
The trip -- his fifth since the war broke out -- comes after Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said there were hopes of "good news" about a fresh pause to the fighting "in the next couple of weeks".
