Israel Bombs Homes In Gaza

Gaza Strip: Israeli air strikes targeted homes in southern Gaza, witnesses say, adding to what aid groups describe as an increasingly hopeless humanitarian situation despite efforts towards new truce talks.

An Israeli delegation led by David Barnea, head of the Mossad intelligence agency, has arrived in Paris in an effort to “unblock” truce discussions in the war with Hamas militants. His trip follows what the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said was the death of more than 100 people over the previous day.

Israeli bombardment destroyed one house and left a gaping hole in the earth east of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where about 1.4 million Gazans have converged in a futile search to escape the fighting. A reporter described heavy strikes in the city of Khan Yunis to the north, as well as in Rafah itself.

Israel has threatened to send troops into Rafah, drawing international criticism.

More than four months of fighting and bombardment have flattened much of Gaza and pushed its population of about 2.4 million to the brink of famine as disease spreads, according to the UN.

“We have reached the point of extreme poverty and hunger,” 62-year-old Zarifa Hamad, a displaced woman living in a camp in northern Gaza, said. “Children are dying of hunger.”

The war started after Hamas’s October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1160 people in Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 29,000 people, mostly women and children. The toll has put pressure on US President Joe Biden to rein in its ally Israel – which it provides with billions of dollars in military aid.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed on Saturday Washington’s opposition to any reoccupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel, as well as any reduction of the territory’s size. Blinken’s remarks were in response to a plan put forward by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which his country’s army would have “indefinite freedom” to operate throughout the Gaza Strip once Hamas is defeated.