Gaza deaths soar as Israel says war to last 'many more months'

The Hamas-run Gaza Strip's health ministry said Wednesday the death toll from thewar with Israel now tops 21,000, with a spokesman reporting 195 deaths over 24hours.
Israel again pounded Gaza with air strikes and shelling after its militarychief warned the war raging with Hamas since the Palestinian group's October 7attacks will last "many more months".
Explosions lit up the sky over the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis -- afocus of heavy urban combat since the Israeli army said it had largely gainedcontrol over Gaza's north, reports BSS.
A strike hit a house near Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis, killing 22 peopleand wounding 34, the Gaza health ministry said.
Heavy firefights also raged again around Gaza City in the north, while anair strike wounded 11 people near Rafah, a far-southern city crowded withinternally displaced people, witnesses said.
Gaza's spiralling humanitarian crisis has amplified calls for an end to thehostilities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to keep upthe campaign to destroy Hamas, an Islamist group blacklisted as a "terrorist"organisation by the United States and the European Union.
"This war's objectives are essential and not simple to achieve," armedforces chief Herzi Halevi said Tuesday. "Therefore, the war will continue formany more months."
The conflict erupted when Hamas gunmen attacked southern Israel, resultingin the deaths of about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFPtally based on Israeli figures.
Palestinian militants also took around 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain incaptivity, Israel says.
Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and a siege of Gazafollowed by a ground invasion from October 27.
The campaign has killed at least 21,110 people, according to the latesttoll issued by Gaza's health ministry, about two thirds of them women andchildren.
Israel's army blames Hamas and its allied armed groups for the highcivilian death toll, charging that fighters hide in schools, hospitals andother civilian infrastructure, or in tunnels below them.
The army said the number of Israeli soldiers killed inside Gaza had risento 164.
Israel on Tuesday returned the bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in Gaza,after checking there were no hostages among them, via the Red Cross, sources inthe health ministry said.
An AFP photographer witnessed a digger lowering the human remains in bluebody bags into a mass grave in Rafah.             

- 'Beyond a catastrophe' -                

Gaza's 2.4 million people have suffered severe shortages of water, food,fuel and medicines, with only limited aid entering the territory.
An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, the UN says.
AFPTV footage showed Palestinians who had been sheltering in a UN-runschool in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp fleeing south, seeking safetyfrom the bombardment.
Displaced Gazans "don't know where to go", said one of them, declining tobe named. "First, we're displaced to Nuseirat, then to Rafah."
Even schools "are no longer safe" in Gaza, said the man.
"A solution must be reached... Implement a ceasefire instead of bringing inaid."      

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, in an interview on Egyptian television,charged that the Gaza war "goes beyond a catastrophe and a genocide".
"Netanyahu's plan is to get rid of the Palestinians and the PalestinianAuthority," said Abbas, who is based in the occupied West Bank.
The UN Security Council, in a resolution last week, called for the "safeand unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale".
The resolution, which did not call for an immediate end to the fighting,effectively leaves Israel with operational oversight of aid deliveries.
In Rafah, hundreds turned up at the Abdul Salam Yassin water companycarrying baskets, pulling handcarts and even pushing a wheelchair stacked withbottles to queue for clean water.
"This was my father's cart," said Rafah resident Amir al-Zahhar. "He wasmartyred during the war. He used it to transport and sell fish, and now we areusing it to transport fresh water."
Elsewhere in Rafah, people split logs and stacked kindling as the lack offuel forced them to burn wood for cooking and to keep warm.
Internet and telephone services that were cut on Tuesday were graduallybeing restored in central and southern areas of Gaza, the Palestiniantelecommunications company Paltel said on X, formerly Twitter.            

- Mideast tensions -    

Violence has also flared across the West Bank, with more than 310Palestinians killed by Israeli troops or settlers since October 7, the healthministry there said.
An Israeli operation in a refugee camp in the northern West Bank killed sixpeople early Wednesday, it said, with the army saying it had struck the NurShams camp from the air.
The war has reverberated across the Middle East, drawing in armed groupsbacked by Israel's arch foe Iran in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
An Israeli air strike on a Lebanon border town killed a Hezbollah fighter,the group said Wednesday, with state media reporting two of his relatives werealso killed.
Hezbollah later Wednesday said it launched a barrage of 30 rockets towardsnorthern Israel "in response to the enemy's repeated crimes".
In Syria, an Israeli strike Monday killed Iranian general Razi Moussavi, asenior commander in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the IslamicRevolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran has vowed to avenge the death of Moussavi, whose body was due to berepatriated for burial after memorial prayers at the Shiite holy sites in Iraqon Wednesday.
Yemen's Huthi rebels have repeatedly fired at Israel and at passing cargoships in the Red Sea in attacks in solidarity with Hamas.
US military forces shot down more than a dozen Huthi attack drones andseveral missiles, the Pentagon said, reporting no casualties or damage.
Israel's military said Tuesday a fighter jet over the Red Sea hadintercepted "a hostile aerial target that was on its way to Israeli territory".