Israel strikes Gaza as UN voices grave concern

(BSS/AFP) - Israel on Tuesday kept up its strikes against Gaza targets despite grave concernexpressed by the United Nations, and international calls for a halt to theIsrael-Hamas war.      
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again vowed there would be no peace untilthe destruction of Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules Gaza, and themilitary said the war would last months.     
Israel's army said it struck military sites and tunnel shafts in Jabalia,northern Gaza, as well as in Khan Yunis in the south, as heavy ground combatcontinued.      
Black smoke clouded the sky over central Gaza on Tuesday afternoon and, inthe south, horse-drawn carts carried some victims to hospital in Khan Yunis,AFP images showed.     
The withering military campaign in Gaza, launched after unprecedented Hamasattacks against southern Israeli communities on October 7, has caused masscivilian casualties, widespread hunger and reduced much of the coastalterritory to rubble.      
Internet and telephone services were again cut across the Palestinianterritory, "due to the ongoing offensive," announced Gaza's main telecoms firm,Paltel.      
"We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza byIsraeli forces," Seif Magango, spokesman for the United Nations Human RightsOffice, said in a statement.     
"It is particularly concerning that this latest intense bombardment comesafter Israeli forces ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move toMiddle Gaza and Tal al-Sultan in Rafah."      
Netanyahu, however, reiterated Israel would stay the course.      
"Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised and Palestiniansociety must be deradicalised," he argued in a Wall Street Journal op-edpublished late Monday.      
"These are the three prerequisites for peace", he wrote.      
On Tuesday Israel's army chief Herzi Halevi told a news conference that thewar "will continue for many more months", a point made earlier this month byDefence Minister Yoav Gallant who said "it will last more than several months".      
The bloodiest ever Gaza war erupted when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel andkilled about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based onIsraeli figures.      
They took 250 hostages of whom 129 remain inside Gaza, Israel says.      
Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and a siege followed by aground invasion. The campaign has killed at least 20,915 people, mostly womenand children, according to the latest toll issued Tuesday by Gaza's healthministry.            
 - Watching a child die -                 
The army says 158 Israeli soldiers have been killed inside Gaza.      
AFPTV images from Gaza City's devastated and largely deserted Tal al-Hawaarea showed dirt roads winding through mountains of rubble amid multi-storeybuildings pancaked by strikes or standing askew.      
"The destruction is very great, and all the owners of the place have beendisplaced to the south," said one Palestinian man. "May God help people throughthe misfortunes they are in."      
Some residents of Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza returned to theruins of their homes after strikes that Gaza's health ministry said killed atleast 70 people. AFP was unable to independently verify that toll.      
Sean Casey, a World Health Organization Emergency Medical Teamscoordinator, was part of a WHO mission to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital incentral Gaza's Deir al-Balah city after the refugee camp strikes.      
In a video shot inside the hospital, Casey appeared to be fighting backtears as he described a nine-year-old boy, Ahmed, "being treated basically withsedation to ease his suffering as he dies", after receiving a head wound when abuilding was struck.      
Only a minority of Gaza's hospitals are even partly functioning, says theWHO, whose Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated his "call foran immediate ceasefire".      
The Israeli army said it was "reviewing the incident" at Al-Maghazi andadded it is "committed to international law including taking feasible steps tominimise harm to civilians".      
Israel has been under increasing pressure from its allies to protectnon-combatants.             
- US-Israeli consultations -                 
Gaza's 2.4 million people are enduring dire shortages of water, food, fueland medicine, with only limited aid entering.      
An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN,many having fled south.      
Netanyahu told members of his conservative Likud party on Monday that hewas ready to support the voluntary migration of civilians out of the GazaStrip, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.      
He reportedly told party members "our problem is not whether to allow anexit, but that there will be countries that are willing to absorb an exit".      
In a statement, Hamas rejected as "absurd" any such discussion. "Therecan't be exile and there is no other choice than to remain on our land."      
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the idea ofpushing Palestinians into Egypt "is a nonstarter".      
Blinken was meeting on Tuesday with Israel's Minister of Strategic AffairsRon Dermer and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan "for face-to-faceconsultations on a number of matters related to the conflict in Gaza and thereturn of hostages held by Hamas", National Security Council spokespersonAdrienne Watson said.  
The war has stoked regional tensions.   
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said an Israeli air strike inSyria killed the senior Quds Force commander Razi Moussavi. President EbrahimRaisi vowed Israel "will certainly pay for this crime".      
Explosions were heard and missiles sighted near a vessel transiting the RedSea off Yemen's port of Hodeida, which is controlled by Iran-backed rebels, theRoyal Navy's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said, reportingthe latest incident in the waterway vital for global trade.      
In Iraq, the US military launched strikes on pro-Iran groups it has blamedfor numerous attacks on US and allied forces since the Israel-Hamas war began.The strike claimed at least one life, according to Iraqi authorities.      
An anti-tank missile fired by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement wounded ninesoldiers as they rescued a civilian injured in another cross-border strike,Israel's military said.       
Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where twoPalestinians were killed on Tuesday.