Mourners carried the bodies of Palestinians draped in flags belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants during a funeral Sunday at the Nour Shams refugee camp near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. (AP Photo/Majidi Mohammed)
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) – As the United States moves toward approving billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel, Israeli forces attack the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight, killing 18 people. Twenty-two people, including children, died, health authorities announced Sunday. Its close allies.
Israel bombs Rafah almost daily, and more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled fighting elsewhere. He also vowed to expand ground attacks against the Hamas militant group to cities on the border with Egypt, despite calls for restraint from the United States and other countries.
“In the coming days, we will increase political and military pressure on Hamas, because this is the only way to recover the hostages and achieve victory. We will inflict even more painful blows on Hamas in the coming days,” Benjamin Netanyahu said. the Prime Minister said in a statement. Details were not disclosed.
The first Israeli airstrike in Rafah killed a man, his wife and their three-year-old child, according to a nearby Kuwait hospital that accepted the bodies. The hospital said the woman was pregnant and doctors were able to save the baby. The second attack killed 17 children and two women from a large family.
“These children were sleeping. What did they do? What was their fault?” one relative, Umm Kareem, asked. Mohammed al-Beheiri said those killed included his daughter Rasha and six children, the youngest of whom was 18 months old. A woman and three children were still under the rubble.
The Israeli-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, at least two-thirds of them children and women, local health authorities say. It destroyed Gaza’s two largest cities and left widespread destruction. Approximately 80% of the territory’s population was evacuated to other areas of the besieged coastal enclave.
The $26 billion aid package approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday includes about $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza, which experts say is on the brink of starvation. The U.S. Senate could pass the bill as soon as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.
The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest across the Middle East, pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its armed allies. Israel and Iran exchanged direct fire this month, raising fears of an all-out war.
Tensions are also rising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli forces attacked a checkpoint with knives and guns early Sunday near the southern West Bank town of Hebron, killing two Palestinians, the military said. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the two people killed were 18 and 19 years old and from the same family. No Israeli troops were injured, the military said.
Later, the military said its troops shot and killed a 43-year-old Palestinian woman who tried to stab a soldier near the Bekaot settlement in the northern West Bank.
Palestinian Red Crescent rescue teams said they had recovered 14 bodies from the Israeli raid on the West Bank’s Nour Shams urban refugee camp that began late Thursday. Those killed included three militants from the Islamic Jihad group and a 15-year-old boy. The military said it had killed 14 militants and arrested eight suspects. Ten Israeli soldiers and one border guard were injured.
In a separate incident in the West Bank, an Israeli man was injured in an explosion on Sunday, the Magen David Adom rescue team said. A video circulating online shows a man approaching a Palestinian flag planted in a field. When he kicks it, an explosive device appears to go off.
At least 469 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Most were killed in Israeli military raids or violent protests.
The war was sparked by an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, in which Hamas and other armed groups killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 hostages. Israel said insurgents were still holding about 100 hostages and the bodies of more than 30 others.
Thousands of Israelis took to the streets to demand new elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a deal with Hamas to free the hostages. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are returned.
The war has left at least 34,097 Palestinians dead and another 76,980 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not count combatants and civilians separately. The actual death toll is likely to be higher, as many bodies are trapped under rubble or in areas beyond the reach of medical workers.
Israel has accused Hamas of insurgents fighting in densely populated residential areas, resulting in civilian casualties. The military rarely comments on individual attacks, which often kill women and children. Without providing evidence, the military said it had killed more than 13,000 Hamas fighters.
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Sammy Magdy reported from Cairo. Jack Jeffrey contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
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