Israel presses on with Gaza offensive as war enters 100th day
Today marks 100 days since Israel continues its deadly war in the Gaza Strip with no end in sight.
Israel kept up bombardments in the besieged strip on Saturday as the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 23,843 have been killed in the territory in 99 days of war.
The ministry said it had registered 60,317 wounded since war erupted on October 7, while thousands remain trapped under rubble.
In the southern city of Rafah, an Israeli airstrike on a house sheltering two displaced families killed 10 people, the ministry said.
Holding up a photo of a dead girl with a piece of bread in her hand, Bassem Arafeh, a relative, said the families in Rafah had been eating dinner when the house was struck on Friday night.
“This child died while she was hungry, while she was eating a piece of bread with nothing on it, where is the International Criminal Court to see how the children die?” Arafeh said. “Where are the Muslims ... and the world leaders?”
Israel claims it targets militants and does all it can to minimize harm to non-combatants as it wages urban warfare against Hamas in the densely populated Palestinian enclave.
But the scale of the killing in Gaza and the dire humanitarian situation has shocked world opinion and fueled growing calls for a cease-fire.
In the central Gaza Strip, residents reported intense gunbattles and tank shelling and Israeli airstrikes in Al-Bureij, Al-Nusseirat and Al-Maghazi, areas housing refugees and descendants of the 1948 war.
Israel blocks aid
Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza have killed at least 151 people, including 11 in a single house, Palestinian health officials said on Friday, while the UN humanitarian office accused Israel of blocking its efforts to send aid to the north.
The office said Israeli authorities were blocking its efforts to help people who had stayed in the north for fear the militants would seize supplies.
“We have systematic refusal from the Israeli side of our effort to get there,” said Andrea De Domenico, Head of Office for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“In particular, they have been very systematic to not allowing us to support hospitals, which is something that is reaching a level of inhumanity that, for me, is beyond comprehension,” he said.
German intervention
Meanwhile, a day after South Africa argued that Israel had committed genocidal acts in Gaza with intent from “the highest levels of state”, the German government announced it will intervene as a third party at the International Court of Justice in defense of the regime.
The intervention came after Israel’s legal team delivered its defense at the UN court in the Hague on Friday. Israel’s ally the US have also dismissed the case as groundless and vowed a robust defense.
Jordan said on Friday Israeli “war crimes” against Palestinians were to blame for heightened regional tension and violence in the Red Sea which it said threatened to ignite a wider war in the Middle East.
Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi voiced support for South Africa’s “genocide” case against Israel at the UN’s top court over the Gaza war, and said Amman was ready to submit legal documents and appear in court if the case proceeds.