Israel bombarded the southern city of Rafah early Saturday where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.
GAZA STRIP — Israel bombed southern Gaza early Saturday as the UN warned the besieged Palestinian territory has been rendered “uninhabitable” by three months of war.
The fighting, triggered by the October 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas, has sent tensions soaring across the region, and shows no signs of abating as the conflict slides into its fourth month on Sunday.
Civilians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have born the brunt of the violence amid widespread displacement, destruction and a deepening humanitarian crisis. With much of the territory already reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said Friday that “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable”.
Israel bombarded the southern city of Rafah early Saturday where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting, an AFP report said.
The Iran-backed group Hezbollah said it had targeted the Israeli military’s Meron air control base with 62 missiles, while the Israeli army reported “approximately 40 launches from Lebanon” early Saturday, with sirens blaring in the Galilee region.
The Hamas-allied Lebanese movement has been trading near-daily fire with Israeli forces since early October and said the barrage was a response to Tuesday’s killing of Saleh al-Aruri in a strike on a Hezbollah stronghold in the Lebanese capital.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Friday that Israeli forces were maintaining a “very high state of readiness” along the border with Lebanon following Aruri’s killing, which Israel has not claimed.
In Gaza, Hagari said, the army continues “to fight … in the north, centre and south”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society on Friday reported shelling and drone fire in the area around Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Yunis. It said seven displaced people, including a five-day-old baby, had been killed while sheltering in the compound, news agencies reported.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the majority of the Palestinian territory’s 36 hospitals have been put out of action by the fighting, while remaining medical facilities face dire shortages.
In central Gaza, a spokesman for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said: “We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe due to the spread of epidemics, with the hospital overcrowded with displaced people.”
A UN team on Friday delivered medical supplies to Gaza authorities in Khan Yunis, and WHO coordinator Sean Casey said it was “the first time we’ve been able to make this delivery in about 10 days.”
“Hospitals have been running short on some supplies,” he said, adding that medical facilities were “working at two or three times their normal capacity.”
Diplomatic Push
Top Western diplomats were in the region as part of a fresh push to raise the flow of aid into Gaza and calm rising tensions.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Turkey on Saturday, where he was due to discuss the Gaza war with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Blinken will also visit several Arab states before heading to Israel and the occupied West Bank next week. During his visit, Blinken plans to discuss with Israeli leaders “immediate measures to increase substantially humanitarian assistance to Gaza”, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell was meeting Lebanese leaders in Beirut for talks on “all aspects of the situation in and around Gaza”.
Germany’s top diplomat, Annalena Baerbock, was also due to travel to the region on Sunday, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, meanwhile, slammed remarks by two far-right Israeli ministers seeking to resettle Gazans outside the territory.
“It’s not up to Israel to determine the future of Gaza, which is Palestinian land,” Colonna told CNN on Friday. — Agencies
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Cover photo: UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths