Region

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israel pressed its blistering assault on the Gazan city of Khan Yunis on Thursday, with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas saying dozens were killed in heavy bombardment and urban combat.

The Israeli army says it has "encircled" Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas's Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, accused of being the mastermind of the October 7 surprise attacks that sparked the war.

An AFP journalist said the bombardment of Khan Yunis was relentless, with strikes hitting every few minutes.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, reported fierce clashes in the centre and west of the city, where fighting has been inching closer to hospitals sheltering thousands of displaced people.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 50 people were killed in Khan Yunis over the past 24 hours. The army said several militants were killed in “close-quarters combat” in the city, and that strikes also targeted militants in central and northern Gaza.

At Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, AFPTV footage showed graves with the names of those buried scrawled on them in crayon amid debris-strewn streets and pockmarked buildings.

“Those look like graves, but they are not proper ones,” said Ahmad Abdul Salam, a resident of the city’s Al Maghazi refugee camp. “We buried whole families, who were wiped out, inside these mass graves.”

‘Terrified’ hospital staff 

Another 12 people were killed on Wednesday when two tank shells struck a UN building sheltering 800 people in Khan Yunis, the United Nations said, updating its previous toll of nine dead.

Thomas White, the Gaza director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), denounced “persistent attacks on civilian sites” in Khan Yunis as “utterly unacceptable”.

Intense fighting near hospitals in Khan Yunis had “effectively encircled these facilities, leaving terrified staff, patients and displaced people trapped inside”, he said in a statement.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday renewed calls for Israel to protect civilians after a deadly strike on a UN shelter in Gaza that brought rare US condemnation.

On a visit to Angola, Blinken told reporters that the UN shelter “is essential and it has to be protected”.

“We have reaffirmed this with the government of Israel and it is my understanding that they are, as is necessary and appropriate, looking into this incident,” Blinken said, without saying at what level discussions took place.

The Israeli army is the only force known to have tanks operating in the Gaza Strip. It said it would conduct a “thorough review” and held out the possibility that the strike was a “result of Hamas fire”.

In contrast with Israel’s frequent criticism of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, Blinken credited the agency for its efforts “to help people who are in desperate need”.

“The work that the UN is performing in Gaza is quite literally life-saving and no one else can do it, and no one else is doing it,” he said.

Israeli protests 

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced mounting calls for a ceasefire, with domestic pressure intensifying after 24 soldiers were killed Monday in the army’s deadliest single day since it launched its Gaza ground operations.

In Tel Aviv, Israeli protesters carried a banner saying: “Stop the bloodshed”, and blocked a road during a demonstration to demand a deal for the release of the hostages held by Hamas.

“We came to say to the government: ‘It’s enough.’ We want all the hostages back home, we want a ceasefire now,” said protester Sapir Sluzker Amran.

“There is no military solution, only a diplomatic solution, only agreements will bring the hostages back.”

Netanyahu, however, has been adamant the war will continue, telling parliament on Wednesday that the fighting would persist until the “aggression and evil” of Hamas were destroyed.

“This is a war for our home,” he said.

US President Joe Biden’s Middle East envoy Brett McGurk was in the region for talks aimed at brokering a new deal to free the remaining captives in exchange for a pause in fighting.

A Palestinian source familiar with the talks said a Hamas delegation had travelled to Cairo this week to meet Egypt’s intelligence chief and discuss new ceasefire proposals.

Kamikaze drones 

Egypt and Qatar have acted as mediators in the conflict, including in November, when a brief truce agreement led to the release of 105 hostages.

But Netanyahu was allegedly caught on tape telling hostages’ families this week that Qatar’s mediation was “problematic”, blaming it for funding Hamas.

The Gulf state said it was “appalled” at the remarks, which “if validated, are irresponsible and destructive to the efforts to save innocent lives”.

The Gaza war has sparked fears of a wider escalation, with a surge in violence involving Iran-aligned Hamas allies across the Middle East.

On Thursday, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hizbollah movement said it attacked Israeli air defence systems across the border with one-way drones.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said Israeli shelling and air strikes targeted villages in the border area.

DUBAI — Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels fired three missiles at two merchant ships in the Red Sea on Wednesday in their latest attack in the commercially vital waterway, the White House said.

The report came after the Houthis vowed to keep up their attacks despite repeated US and British strikes against them.

One missile missed its target and a US Navy destroyer shot down the other two, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

The continuing Houthi action "means we're obviously still going to have to do what we have to do to protect that shipping", he added.

US Central Command said the missiles were fired "towards the US-flagged, owned, and operated container ship M/V Maersk Detroit" without mentioning a second vessel being targeted.

No injuries or damage to the ship were reported, CENTCOM added.

Danish shipping giant Maersk earlier said two ships belonging to a US subsidiary and bound for the Red Sea turned back after hearing explosions while transiting the Bab al-Mandeb strait between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

A US navy escort accompanying the Maersk Detroit and the Maersk Chesapeake also "intercepted multiple projectiles", the company said.

"The crew, ship, and cargo are safe and unharmed. The US Navy has turned both ships around and is escorting them back to the Gulf of Aden," it added.

United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a security agency run by Britain's navy, said it had received reports of "an explosion approximately 100 metres" from a vessel 50 nautical miles south of the Yemeni port of Mokha, which overlooks Bab Al Mandeb.

British maritime risk management company Ambrey corroborated the UKMTO and Maersk reports, adding that both vessels had last called in Oman.

Huthi attacks since mid-November have disrupted trade in the Red Sea, which connects Europe and Asia and carries around 12 per cent of international maritime traffic.

The rebels say they are targeting Israeli-linked vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza, which has been ravaged by the Hamas-Israel war that has inflamed tensions across the Middle East.

Several shipping firms have diverted away from the Red Sea, instead taking the longer and more expensive route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

It follows difficult years for the industry during the COVID-19 pandemic, when freight rates reached unprecedented levels due to blockages in supply chains.

The United States and Britain have carried out two rounds of joint strikes this month aimed at reducing the Houthis’ ability to target shipping.

The US military has also launched a series of unilateral air raids on the rebels’ missiles.

It said its latest strikes early on Wednesday destroyed two Houthi missiles that posed an “imminent threat” to ships in the area.

The Houthis have reacted to the US and UK strikes with defiance, firing at more ships and declaring American and British interests to be legitimate targets.

Washington is also seeking to put diplomatic and financial pressure on the Huthis, redesignating them as a terrorist organisation last week after dropping that label soon after President Joe Biden took office.

BAGHDAD — Iraq accused the United States of contributing to a "reckless escalation" of violence in the region after American air strikes targeted Iran-backed groups in the country on Wednesday.

The pre-dawn air raid came against an already explosive regional backdrop, fuelled by the war in Gaza between Washington's ally Israel and Hamas.

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said US forces had carried out "necessary and proportionate strikes" against "three facilities used by the Iranian-backed Ketaeb Hizbollah militia group (the Hizbollah Brigades) and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq".

"These precision strikes are in direct response to a series of escalatory attacks against US and coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias," he said, referring to the US-led coalition against the Daesh terror group.

US-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria have been targeted in more than 150 attacks since mid-October, many of them claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-linked groups that oppose US support for Israel in the Gaza conflict.

US forces have carried out a number of air strikes against the groups they hold responsible, drawing a backlash from Iraq which has demanded the coalition’s withdrawal, accusing it of overstepping its mission to assist the campaign against Daesh extremists.

“This unacceptable act undermines years of cooperation, blatantly violates Iraq’s sovereignty and contributes to a reckless escalation... at a time when the region is already grappling with the danger of expanding conflict,” said a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani.

“We will treat these operations as acts of aggression and take necessary actions to preserve the lives and dignity of Iraqis,” added Yehia Rasool, the Iraqi leader’s spokesman for military affairs.

His comments were echoed by Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem Al Araji who said the pre-dawn strikes were another “flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty” and “do not help bring calm”.

“The US side should pile on pressure for a halt to the [Israeli] offensive in Gaza rather than targeting and bombing the bases of an Iraqi national body,” Araji said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, referring to the Hashed Al Shaabi.

According to Iraqi sources, the US strikes targeted the Hizbollah Brigades, a group affiliated with the Hashed Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation force), an alliance of Iran-backed former paramilitary groups now integrated in Iraq’s regular armed forces.

They hit sites in the Jurf Al Sakhr area, south of Baghdad, as well as in the Al Qaim area on the border with Syria.

One person was killed and others were wounded in the bombardments of the Al Qaim sector, the Hashed said in a statement. Initially, an interior ministry official and a source in the Hashed reported two dead and two wounded in that attack.

After previous US strikes, the Iraqi prime minister has called for the US-led coalition to leave, saying the deployment must end to ensure Iraq’s security.

There are roughly 2,500 US troops in Iraq and some 900 in neighbouring Syria.

Drones targeted 

The US military said the latest strikes targeted Hizbollah Brigades “headquarters, storage and training locations for rocket, missile and one-way attack UAV [drone]capabilities”.

Classified as a “terrorist” group by Washington and subject to US sanctions, the Brigades have already been targeted by US strikes in recent weeks. The group has publicly supported the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

Late on Tuesday, several drones targeted an airbase in Iraq hosting US troops, causing injuries and damage, a US military official said.

“Multiple attack drones were launched” at the Ain Al Assad base in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, a US military official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

“Latest reports include injuries and damage to infrastructure,” said the official, adding he did not have further details as yet.

An Iraqi security official, meanwhile, said a drone was shot down as it attempted to target the base.

In a statement, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for two drone attacks against the base on Tuesday, saying they were acting in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The same base was targeted by at least a dozen missiles on Saturday in what White House Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer described as a “very serious” attack.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Combat raged in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, against a backdrop of negotiations aimed at bringing about a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas in the absence of a long-term peace plan.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said early Tuesday that Israeli forces had targeted its headquarters in Khan Yunis "with artillery shelling on the fourth floor, coinciding with intense gunfire from Israeli drones, resulting in injuries among internally displaced individuals who sought safety on our premises".

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA reported that "ground operations, fighting and attacks intensified" over the preceding day around the main southern city, with the Israeli army saying its forces had conducted multiple raids and taken control of Hamas command centres there.

The fierce fighting came as a White House official was due in the region for talks aimed at securing more hostage releases, and as US media reported a new Israeli proposal for a deal that would involve a two-month pause in fighting.

UN agencies and aid groups have sounded the alarm about the growing threat of disease and famine in Gaza, where 1.7 million people are estimated to have been displaced from their homes.

Abu Iyad, his belongings piled on a donkey-drawn cart, told AFP on Monday that he was moving for the seventh time, fleeing Khan Yunis for Rafah on the Egyptian border, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have settled, many in makeshift tents.

“I’m heading to the unknown,” he said. “They told us to go to Rafah, where to go in Rafah? Is there any space left?”

Hostage talks 

The war in the Palestinian territory broke out with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 surprise attacks. In response, Israel has carried out a relentless offensive that has killed at least 25,295 people in Gaza, around 70 per cent of them women, children and adolescents, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The Hamas attack also saw about 250 hostages seized, and Israel says around 132 remain in Gaza. That number includes the bodies of at least 28 dead hostages, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli data.

Relatives of the captives stormed a parliamentary committee meeting on Monday demanding urgent action.

“You sit here while our children are dying over there,” yelled Gilad Korngold, father of hostage Tal Shoham, an AFP correspondent reported.

US news outlet Axios reported on Monday night that Israel had proposed to Hamas, via Qatari and Egyptian mediators, a new deal to free all the hostages.

The report, citing unnamed Israeli officials, said the proposed deal would be carried out in multiple stages, and would also involve the release of an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners.

The plan was expected to take about two months to complete.

The proposal does not include promises to end the war, but it would involve Israeli troops reducing their presence in major cities in Gaza and gradually allowing residents to return to the territory’s devastated north, the Axios report said.

News of the proposal comes as US media said the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, was expected in Egypt and Qatar for meetings aimed at securing a new hostage exchange deal.

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel, however, said that Washington still believed “a two-state solution, a creation of a Palestinian state, is the only path that gets us out of this endless cycle of violence”.

Deadliest day

The Israeli army said Tuesday that 24 soldiers had been killed in Gaza the day before, the biggest single-day toll since the start of its ground operation on October 27.

Twenty-one soldiers were killed when rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire hit a tank near two buildings where they were carrying out an operation, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement.

He said the attack occurred at around 4pm (1400 GMT) on Monday and all those killed were reservists.

The RPG was fired at a tank that was protecting the troops when an explosion erupted in two nearby two-storey buildings, Hagari said.

“The buildings collapsed as a result of this explosion, while most of the force was inside and near it,” he said.

The buildings exploded as troops had planted explosives in them after the two structures had been identified as “terrorist infrastructure” in the area, Hagari said.

A medical evacuation team was deployed but it was a “complicated operation, which took place until the last hours”, Hagari said, indicating the difficulty in extracting bodies buried under the rubble.

“The dedicated reservists, who stood up for the flag, sacrificed what was dearest to them for the security of the state of Israel so that we can all live here in complete safety,” he said.

The army had previously announced the deaths of three other soldiers on Monday, taking the day’s overall toll to 24, the deadliest since the ground offensive started in Gaza.

WASHINGTON — The United States and Britain launched new strikes on Yemen's Houthis on Monday, saying their second round of joint military action against the Iran-backed rebels was in response to continued attacks on Red Sea shipping.

American and British forces carried out a first wave of strikes against the rebel group earlier this month, and the United States launched further air raids against missiles that Washington said posed imminent threats to both civilian and military vessels.

But the Huthis have vowed to continue their attacks — just one part of a growing crisis in the Middle East linked to the Israel-Hamas war, which has raised tensions across the region as well as fears of a broader war directly involving Iran.

The latest US-UK strikes were against "eight Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the Houthis' continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea," Washington and London said in a joint statement with other countries that supported the military action.

They “specifically targeted a Houthi underground storage site and locations associated with the Houthis’ missile and air surveillance capabilities”, the statement said.

“These precision strikes are intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Huthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent mariners,” it said, adding that the rebel group had carried out “a series of illegal, dangerous, and destabilising” actions since the previous joint US-UK air raids.

Targeting weapons systems 

A senior US military official said the strikes were carried out using a combination of precision-guided munitions from American and British aircraft, and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

There were no concerns about civilian casualties at the sites that were hit, while Houthi losses are unknown at this time, the official told journalists.

“The targeting was very specific and... very deliberate to go after the capability that they are using to attack maritime vessels in the Red Sea, Bab Al Mandab and Gulf of Aden. They were they were not intentionally selected for casualties, they were going after weapons systems,” the official added.

Yemen’s official Saba news agency said strikes hit the capital Sanaa and several other parts of the country, while Houthi TV outlet Al Masirah said four strikes targeted the Al Dailami military base north of the capital, which is under rebel control.

Earlier on Monday, Huthis claimed they fired on a US military cargo ship off the coast of Yemen, with their military spokesman Yahya Saree saying they “led a military operation targeting the American military cargo ship Ocean Jazz in the Gulf of Aden”, near the Red Sea, with missiles.

Two months of attacks 

Asked about the claim, a US defence official told AFP: “We’re not seeing that at all on our end and believe that statement to be untrue.”

The Yemeni rebels began striking Red Sea shipping in November, saying they were hitting Israeli-linked vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza, which has been ravaged by the Hamas-Israel war.

The Houthis have since declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets as well.

In addition to military action, Washington is seeking to put diplomatic and financial pressure on the Houthis, redesignating them as a “terrorist” entity last week after dropping that label soon after President Joe Biden took office.

The rebels reiterated on Monday that they will “respond to any attack” on Yemen and continue to “prevent Israeli ships” from crossing the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden until the end of the war in Gaza.

GENEVA — The population of the Gaza Strip faces an increasing risk of famine as the Hamas-Israel war drags on, the UN's World Food Programme warned Tuesday.

"The situation in Gaza is of course slipping every day into a much more catastrophic situation," with "a looming threat of famine", Abeer Etefa, the WFP's senior Middle East spokeswoman told a press briefing.

A study conducted between November 24 and December 7 found that all 2.2 million people in the Palestinian territory were in a crisis level of food insecurity.

The picture has deteriorated since, said Etefa, speaking by video link froom Cairo.

"More than half a million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic food insecurity levels and the risk of famine increases each day."

Etefa said that even with the long years of conflict in places like Syria, Yemen and Sudan, "we haven't seen that high a level of the number of people in these conditions in such a short span of time".

She recalled that Gaza now has "the largest concentration of people in what looks like famine-like conditions anywhere in the world".

'People becoming more desperate' 

The Gaza war broke out with Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attacks, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel's relentless offensive in response has killed at least 25,490 people in Gaza, around 70 percent of them women, children and adolescents, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Etefa said about 70 percent of WFP requests to deliver food to northern Gaza were rejected by the Israeli authorities.

The last deliveries to the north were around January 11 and 13, carrying 200 tonnes of food for 15,000 people in Gaza City. 

"That's really very, very small numbers," Etefa said.

"This is why we're seeing people becoming more desperate," as they have no idea when the trucks might come again.

The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said that in the first two weeks of January, only seven of 29 planned missions to deliver life-saving supplies to northern Gaza were permitted by the Israeli authorities.

Etefa called it “systematic limitation”, while a communications blackout in Gaza was also hindering the distribution of food.

Begging for food in hospitals 

Since October 7, the WFP has sent 1,403 trucks carrying more than 24,000 tonnes of food into Gaza, including over 730 trucks carrying more than 13,000 tonnes in January so far.

It has a further 21,000 tonnes of food supplies — enough for the two million people in Gaza for one month — which are either in stores in neighbouring Egypt, on the way to Gaza or already on trucks on the border.

Gaza bakeries are producing an average of one million bread loaves per day, it added. 

The UN humanitarian agency said this week that only 15 bakeries are still functioning in Gaza. 

Meanwhile World Health Organisation spokesman Christian Lindmeier said one recent mission to deliver fuel to hospitals was repeatedly held up by people “desperately looking for food”, with the team having to show that “there’s nothing to eat” on board.

“We have very grave reports from inside the hospitals: People begging as they are lying waiting for surgery, begging for water and food. Horrible scenarios on the ground,” he added.