Region

A barrage of air strikes and tank fire rocked Khan Yunis overnight and through the day, an AFP journalist said of the main city in southern Gaza that has been the focus of Israel's offensive.

The health ministry in Gaza said more than 100 people were killed across the Palestinian territory overnight, mostly women and children. The Israeli army said its forces killed "dozens of terrorists" in northern and central Gaza over the past 24 hours.

Hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s 2.4 million people displaced by the fierce fighting have fled south to Rafah since the outbreak of the war, with their tents crammed along streets and in parks.

The city that had been home to 200,000 people now hosts more than half of Gaza’s population, the United Nations said.

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.

AFPTV images showed Palestinians gathered around a row of body bags at the Najjar hospital in Rafah after Israeli strikes.

“The children were just sleeping and suddenly the bombardment happened. God took one of my children and three escaped death,” said Ahmad Bassam Al Jamal, who also lost his father.

Hamas remained defiant, with an official from the Palestinian Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 saying it was “holding its ground” in Khan Yunis.

“The resistance is still steadfast in Khan Yunis... it is inflicting losses on the occupation,” said Mahmud Mardawi. “The enemy will not achieve anything by targeting Khan Yunis.”

‘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.

Blinken on fifth trip

Image analysis released Friday by the UN satellite centre UNITAR based on footage collected on January 6 and 7 showed “approximately 30 per cent” 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”.

Ansari said a truce proposal thrashed out in Paris had “been approved by the Israeli side” and received a “positive” initial response from Hamas as well.

But a source close to Hamas told AFP: “There is no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet, the factions have important observations, and the Qatari statement is rushed and not true.”

A Hamas source said it had been presented with a plan involving an initial six-week pause in fighting that would see more aid delivered into Gaza and exchanges of certain Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

The leaders of Hamas and its Gaza ally Islamic Jihad, Qatar-based Ismail Haniyeh and Ziyad Al Nakhalah, respectively, discussed the latest development and said any future ceasefire must lead to “a full withdrawal” of Israeli troops from Gaza, Haniyeh’s office said.

"Everybody should try to avoid that the situation becomes explosive," Borrell said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The United States launched air strikes against Iranian forces and allied militias in Iraq and Syria on Friday, with President Joe Biden vowing more to come in retaliation for a deadly drone attack on an American base in Jordan.

Borrell said the US response was expected after Biden signalled that Washington would hit back.

"Certainly every attack contributes to the escalation, and the ministers have expressed their serious concern for this process," he said following the meeting.

"We can only call on everybody to understand that at any moment from this series of attacks and counter attacks, a spark can produce a greater incident."

Borrell said that in a bid to calm the spiral of violence the EU would launch a naval mission in the Red Sea this month to help protect international vessels from attacks by Yemen's Houthis.

The United States blamed Sunday's drone attack on a US base in an outpost Jordan's north-eastern borders with Syria on forces backed by Iran, but did not strike inside Iranian territory, with both Washington and Tehran seemingly keen to avoid all-out war.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said US warplanes struck “more than 85 targets at seven facilities utilised by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the militant groups that they sponsor”. Three of the facilities were in Iraq and four were in Syria.

“These targets were carefully selected to avoid civilian casualties,” he added.

But Iraqi government spokesman Bassem Al Awadi said civilians were among at least 16 people killed in the US strikes in western Iraq.

“This aggressive air strike will push the security situation in Iraq and the region to the brink of the abyss,” Awadi said.

Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani declared three days of mourning over the deaths.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the overnight operation was “another strategic mistake by the US government, which will have no result other than intensifying tension and instability”.

Hamas accused Washington of pouring “oil on the fire”.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign ministry accused Washington of “sowing chaos and destruction” in the Middle East.

The Syrian foreign ministry said the strikes served to “inflame the conflict in the Middle East in an extremely dangerous way”.

Flurry of attacks 

The Syrian army said “a number of civilians and soldiers” were killed in the strikes in eastern Syria, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported no civilian deaths.

The Britain-based observatory said the strikes killed 23 pro-Iran fighters, including two from Lebanese Hizbollah and others were now evacuating their positions for fear of more US strikes.

The observatory also said civilians in the towns of Deir Ezzor and Mayadeen had fled their homes in fear of fresh US strikes.

US President Joe Biden underlined that the overnight strikes were only a beginning. “Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he said in a statement.

His National Security Council spokesman said Washington “did inform the Iraqi government prior to the strikes”, but his remark drew an angry denial from Baghdad.

The Iraqi government spokesman called it an “unfounded claim crafted to mislead international public opinion” and the foreign ministry said it would call in the US charge d’affaires in Baghdad to deliver a formal protest.

Tensions between the two governments have deepened in recent months after Washington carried out previous air strikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq in response to a flurry of attacks on US-led troops since the Gaza war began last October.

Washington and Baghdad opened talks on the future of the US-led troop presence late last month after repeated demands from Sudani for a timetable for their withdrawal.

‘Significant 

escalation’ 

The United States has some 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq as part of an international coalition against the Daesh terror group, which once controlled swathes of both countries.

Its troops in Iraq are deployed at the invitation of Baghdad, but those in Syria are deployed in areas outside the control of the Damascus government.

They operate out of bases in the Kurdish-held northeast or in a small pocket of territory along the borders with Iraq and Jordan.

The Syrian military demanded on Saturday that Washington withdraw its troops.

“The occupation of parts of Syrian territory by US forces cannot continue,” it said.

Analysts said the US strikes were unlikely to stem the flurry of attacks on US targets sparked by American support for Israel in its war on Hamas.

The strikes represent a “significant escalation”, according to Allison McManus, managing director for national security and international policy at the Centre for American Progress.

But she was sceptical about their impact, adding: “We have not seen that similar tit-for-tat strikes have had a deterrent effect.”

US and coalition troops have been attacked more than 165 times in Iraq, Syria and Jordan since mid-October.

The soldiers killed Sunday were the first American military deaths from hostile fire in the upsurge of violence. 

Cameron and Mikati discussed "ways to restore calm in southern Lebanon, as well as the political and diplomatic solution that is needed", the prime minister's office said.

Cameron is the latest in a succession of Western ministers to visit Beirut amid concern that the Gaza war could spark a wider conflict involving Iranian allies around the Middle East.

A major focus of their efforts has been to reinforce the United Nations Security Council resolution that ended a 2006 war between Hizbollah and Israel.

Resolution 1701 called for all armed personnel to pull back north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometres from the border, except for Lebanese state security forces and UN peacekeepers.

While Hizbollah has not had a visible military presence in the border area since 2006, the group still holds sway over large parts of the south, where it has built tunnels and hideouts and launched missile and drone attacks into Israel.

Mikati discussed with Cameron "ways to implement UN Resolution 1701", his office said.

"Lebanon supports a peaceful solution in the region," Mikati said, adding: "Lebanon supports the implementation of international resolutions to the letter, especially Resolution 1701."

Cameron also met the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, a Hizbollah ally, as well as the country's army chief Joseph Aoun.

A Western diplomat told AFP there was an increasing possibility that Israel will escalate border tensions due to internal political pressure, "but meanwhile, Hezbollah does not want to start a war".

Hizbollah had previously signalled willingness to endorse a diplomatic solution, but only after Israel ends its war on Gaza.

Western diplomats, including British officials, are pushing for a solution that would include "fully implementing resolution 1701 and giving new impetus" to UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), said the Western official.

Senior Hizbollah official Nabil Kaouk said on Wednesday that the group had “intensified” its operations “in response to Israel’s escalation”, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

His comments came after Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday that troops would “very soon go into action” near the Lebanese border.

Nearly four months of cross-border fire have killed over 210 people in Lebanon, most of them Hizbollah fighters but also including more than 25 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side of the border, nine soldiers and six civilians have been killed, Israeli officials have said.