Israel-Gaza war: Israel bombards crowded southern Gaza as Netanyahu withdraws negotiators from Qatar

With Israel’s bombardment of the crowded southern half of the Gaza Strip continuing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has withdrawn negotiators from Qatar, in the clearest sign yet that a return to negotiations for further truces is unlikely.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed since the collapse of the truce.

It said that the overall death toll in Gaza since the October 7 start of the war had passed 15,200, 70 per cent of which were women and children.

The renewed hostilities have heightened concerns for 136 Israeli hostages who, according to the Israeli military, are still held by Hamas and other militants.

Nowhere to go, say Gazans in south under Israeli bombardment

Israeli war planes and artillery bombarded the south of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, hitting mosques, homes and and area close to a hospital, after the collapse of a truce in the nearly-two-month war between Israel and Hamas militants.

“We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it’s impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address Saturday night.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed and 650 wounded since the truce ended on Friday morning, adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinians dead since the start of the war.

Israel’s military said on Saturday it had hit more than 400 Hamas targets across Gaza over the day, using air strikes and shelling from tanks and navy gunships. It included 50 strikes in the city of Khan Younis and surrounding areas in southern Gaza.

Residents in the southern part of Gaza said houses had been hit and three mosques destroyed in Khan Younis. Multiple casualties were reported in a strike that flattened a multi-story building on the outskirts of Gaza City.

At least nine people, including three children, were killed in a strike on a house in Deir al-Balah city in the south, according to the hospital where the bodies were taken. The hospital also received seven bodies of others killed in overnight air strikes, including two children.

The Palestinian higher education ministry said an Israeli air strike targeting the town of Al-Faluja killed Sufyan Tayeh, a prominent Palestinian scientist in physics and applied mathematics, and his family.

The southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah have become the focus of strikes and artillery fire since the fighting resumed, with its population swelling in recent weeks as several hundred thousand people from the northern Gaza Strip have fled south.

Residents feared the barrages were a prelude to an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory, which would bottle them up in a shrinking area and possibly try to push them into neighbouring Egypt.

Leaflets were dropped from the sky over several districts in Khan Younis by the Israeli army, ordering people to move further south to Rafah on Friday.

“This is the same tactic they used before entering Gaza and the north,” said Yamen, who gave only his first name.

Yamen fled to Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza from the north after Israel destroyed several districts there.

“Where to after Deir Al-Balah, after Khan Younis? I don’t know where I would take my wife and six children,” he said.

Another Gazan, Abu Wael Nasrallah, told Reuters, “This is nonsense.”

Mr Nasrallah had heeded Israeli evacuation orders and moved from the northern Gaza Strip and said he and his family would not move further south because they had already lost everything.

“There is nothing left to fear. Our homes are gone, our property is gone, our money is gone, our sons have been killed, some are handicapped. What is left to cry for?”

The UN estimates that up to 1.8 million people in the Gaza Strip — nearly 80 per cent of the population — have been forced to flee during Israel’s devastating bombing campaign.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris said on Saturday on the sidelines of the COP28 conference in Dubai that “under no circumstances” would the US permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza or the redrawing of Gaza’s borders.

“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating,” she said.

Palestinian militant groups said they fired a barrage of rockets at southern Israel. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis at ‘breaking point’: Red Cross head

The resumption of fighting in the Gaza Strip has been intense, deepening the humanitarian crisis to “breaking point”, the director-general of the Red Cross said on Saturday.

“We don’t have precise reports but what I can say is the resumption of fighting was intense again,” International Committee of the Red Cross director-general Robert Mardini told Reuters at the COP28 UN summit.

“It’s a new layer of disruption coming on top of massive, unparalleled destruction of critical infrastructure, of civilian houses and neighbourhoods,” he said.

Mr Mardini warned the violence would make it difficult to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, describing the Strip as being in “shambles and rubble”.

He said that people in Gaza were “living in constant fear of violent death” and struggling to survive amid shortages of food and water caused by the fighting, while hospitals were working with limited resources.

“Everything in Gaza is at the breaking point,” Mr Mardini said.

The Red Cross, a neutral, Swiss-based organisation, had helped facilitate hostage exchanges during the week-long truce.

Mr Mardini said the ICRC was ready to facilitate further release operations.

The first aid trucks since the end of the Israel-Hamas truce entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday through the Egyptian side of Rafah crossing, Egyptian security and Red Crescent sources said, with an Israeli military spokesperson also confirming the delivery.

A senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilians as the fighting resumes.

Macron says he is going to Qatar to work on new truce

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday France was “very concerned” by the resumption of violence in Gaza and that he was heading to Qatar to help in efforts to kickstart a new truce.

He also told a press conference at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai that the situation required the doubling down on efforts to obtain a lasting ceasefire and the freeing of all hostages.

Mr Macron urged Israel to clarify its goals towards Hamas.

“We are at a moment when Israeli authorities must more precisely define their objectives and their final goal: the total destruction of Hamas, does anyone think it is possible? If this is the case, the war will last 10 years,” he said.

“There is no lasting security for Israel in the region if its security is achieved at the cost of Palestinian lives and thus of the resentment of public opinions in the region. Let’s be collectively lucid,” Mr Macron said.

Israel said on Saturday it was pulling its Mossad negotiators out of Qatar, which is mediating efforts to secure a renewed pause, after a deadlock in the talks.

“Following an impasse in the negotiations and at the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, David Barnea, head of the Mossad, ordered his team in Doha to return to Israel,” Mr Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Israeli strikes in Syria kill revolutionary guards, Hezbollah fighters

Israeli air strikes killed two Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers and two pro-Hezbollah fighters when they hit sites belonging to the Lebanese group near Damascus on Saturday, a war monitor said.

The strikes near the Syrian capital came less than 24 hours after the end of the seven-day pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas.

“Two Syrian fighters working with Hezbollah and two IRGC officers were killed in Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah sites near Sayyida Zeinab” south of Damascus, said Rami Abdel Rahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The two IRGC officers were the target of the Israelis. They struck immediately after the pair went into the Hezbollah site,” said the head of the Britain-based monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.

The monitor said five other fighters were wounded by the strikes.

Israel has intensified its attacks on Syria since the Israel-Gaza war began.

Syria’s defence ministry had said Israel hit near Damascus from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants also exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border.

The Israeli army did not respond to a request for comment.