The latest:
- Foreigners await word about leaving Gaza through Rafah crossing as airstrike hits refugee camp.
- U.S. secretary of state visits West Bank to meet with Palestinian leader Abbas.
- Palestinian aid organization reporting bombardment near Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City.
The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said on Sunday the Israeli military struck a refugee camp in the territory overnight, killing at least 40 people, as calls by the Arab world for a ceasefire were rejected by the United States and Israel.
The Maghazi camp in central Gaza is located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians to seek refuge as it focuses its military offensive in the northern areas.
In a separate attack, 21 Palestinians from one family, including women and children, were killed in Israeli strikes targeting Gaza overnight, the Health Ministry said.
Reuters could not independently verify these accounts. Asked for comment, the Israeli military said they were waiting and gathering details.
With the death toll in Gaza mounting, pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged protests in cities around the world on Saturday, calling for an end to the nearly month-old war.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to the occupied West Bank on Sunday and met with the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas as part of a regional tour aimed at tackling the crisis.
Palestinian officials said Blinken flew in to Tel Aviv and travelled over land. Abbas has had little sway in Gaza, however, since the Hamas takeover of the enclave in 2007. The two met for about an hour but did not address the media.
Gaza health officials said on Sunday more than 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, which began when Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. The attack left about 1,400 people dead, and more than 240 others were taken hostage, the Israeli government says.
Israel continued to strike the Gaza Strip by air, sea and ground overnight.
Gaza health officials said airstrikes destroyed a cluster of houses in the Maghazi refugee camp. Reuters footage showed people searching through rubble for victims or survivors at the refugee camp in central Gaza. One man, crying, was being embraced by others.
Mohammad Al-Aloul, a photographer for Turkish news agency Anadolu, said he lost his four children, four of his brothers and their children in the strike, which destroyed his house.
“I was doing my job when I heard that an Israeli airstrike targeted a residential district in Maghazi and that there are martyrs and injured,” Al-Aloul told Reuters.
“I arrived in hospital and found out that my four children, including my only daughter, were martyred.”
Israel says it is targeting Hamas, not civilians, and that the Islamist Palestinian group is using residents as human shields.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said there was also intense bombardment, violent artillery explosions, and airstrikes in the vicinity of the Al-Quds Hospital in the Tal Al-Hawa area of southern Gaza City.
‘More pain’
Foreign ministers from Qatar, Saudi, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates met Blinken in Amman on Saturday and pushed for Washington to persuade Israel to agree to a ceasefire.
“This war is just going to produce more pain for Palestinians, for Israelis, and this is going to push us all again into the abyss of hatred and dehumanization,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said at a press conference with Blinken. “So that needs to stop.”
However, Blinken dismissed the idea of a ceasefire, saying it would only benefit Hamas, allowing it to regroup and attack again.
Washington had proposed localized pauses in fighting to allow in humanitarian aid and for people to leave the densely populated Gaza Strip. Israel’s Netanyahu rejected this when he met Blinken on Friday in Tel Aviv.
Blinken is to visit Turkey on Monday for talks on the conflict, continuing his second trip to the region since the conflict reignited.
Speaking in Shanghai, Mohammad Mokhber, Iran’s first vice-president, called Israeli actions “a war crime,” adding, “We need to end this immediately and provide more humanitarian assistance to Gaza.”
Israel’s assault and siege have stirred global alarm at humanitarian conditions in the narrow coastal enclave.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged protests on Saturday in cities including London, Berlin, Paris, Istanbul and Jakarta, calling for a ceasefire. Tens of thousands gathered in Washington to denounce U.S. President Joe Biden’s war policy and demand a ceasefire.
In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told tens of thousands gathered in Jakarta on Sunday that the government reaffirmed its support for the struggle of the Palestinian people and would send a second shipment of aid.
Deadly clash in West Bank
Worsening violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has fuelled concerns that the flashpoint Palestinian territory could become a third front in a wider war, in addition to Israel’s northern border, where clashes with Lebanese Hezbollah forces have mounted.
In Abu Dis, a Palestinian village near Jerusalem, Israeli police conducting an arrest raid were fired on by a gunman and killed him, a police spokesperson said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said three Palestinians were killed in the incident, which it described as clashes with Israeli forces. Another Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Hebron, the ministry said. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on that.
This year had already been the deadliest for West Bank residents in at least 15 years, with some 200 Palestinians and 26 Israelis killed, according to UN data. Since the war in Gaza began, 121 West Bank Palestinians have been killed.
Daily attacks by Israeli settlers have more than doubled, UN figures show, even though most of the deaths have occurred during clashes with Israeli soldiers.
Israel last month ordered all civilians to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip and its military has since encircled Gaza City, where it is engaged in fierce street fighting with Hamas militants.
Israeli planes dropped leaflets on Gaza’s biggest city, ordering people to move south through the Salah Al-Deen Road between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time Sunday.
“Time has come, the state of Israel asks you to preserve your lives and to evacuate your homes from the areas of fighting,” the leaflets said.
Rafah crossing closed
Hundreds of foreign passport holders and some critically injured people were able to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing from the south of the enclave into Egypt over the past week. However, the crossing closed on Saturday, leaving no escape route for civilians.
Canadians are among the foreign nationals stuck in southern Gaza waiting for approval to cross into Egypt.
Global Affairs Canada sent a bulletin to Canadians, permanent residents and eligible family members Friday telling them they may be able to leave as early as Sunday, but the crossing remained closed all day on Saturday — the impact of that decision is still unknown.
‘Death haunts us every second’
Palestinian Canadian Seham al-Batnejy and her daughter, who both have Canadian citizenship, are among those waiting to cross.
“We’ve been struggling for five days going back and forth to the Rafah border crossing,” she said on Sunday.
“I swear to God, I come amid the strikes above our heads. We walk scared. Death haunts us every second.”
Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry, has called for safe passage for 400 critically injured people to leave Gaza through Rafah and said hospitals had almost exhausted their last fuel supplies.
The evacuations were suspended after an Israeli strike on Friday on an ambulance in Gaza being used to transport injured people, Egyptian official sources said. The Israeli military said, without showing evidence, the vehicle was carrying Hamas militants.
U.S. special envoy David Satterfield said in Amman on Saturday that 800,000 to a million people had moved south, while 350,000 to 400,000 remained in and around Gaza City.
Living conditions in Gaza, already dire before the war, have deteriorated. Food is scarce, residents are drinking salty water and medical services are collapsing.
The UN humanitarian office estimates that nearly 1.5 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are internally displaced.