Israel pounds Gaza as fears grow of push into Rafah

AFP | Palestinian Territories                                      

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Israel pressed its blistering assault in the Gaza Strip yesterday as fears grew over a push into Rafah, the southern city teeming with civilians uprooted by the nearly four-month war.

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 Hamas-run 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.

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.

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".