Israel-Palestine live: Netanyahu rejects Hamas ceasefire proposal, vows ‘total victory’
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Israeli air strikes have killed 18 Palestinians on Saturday, Palestinians health officials announced.
The air strikes struck Rafah and the Deir al-Balah areas of Gaza.
The health officials added that an air strike struck a home in Rafah, killing 14 including women and children.
The attack came after Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said forces would focus attacks on Rafah, where more than one million forcibly displaced Palestinians are crammed.
Tens of thousands of people have arrived in Rafah in recent days, carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces last week launched one of their biggest assaults since the start of the war on Khan Younis.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Saturday that he has received confirmation from representatives of five countries that had suspended funding to Unrwa that they intend to resume their donations within several weeks.
Shtayyeh made the comments after he received several western ambassadors and consuls at his office on Thursday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Iran's foreign ministry on Saturday condemned overnight US airdstrikes in Iraq and Syria as "violations of the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of the two countries.
In a statement, military spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said the attacks represented "another adventurous and strategic mistake by the United States that will result only in increased tension and instability in the region".
The Palestinian Ministry of Health on Saturday announced that the death toll in Gaza has reached 27,238 since the start of the war on 7 October.
An additional 66,452 have also been wounded in Israeli attacks in the same time frame.
US air strikes on Iraq have killed 16 people, amongst them civilians, and wounded 25 in overnight attacks on pro-Iran targets in Iraq, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's office said on Saturday.
In a statement, it condemned the strikes as a "new aggression against Iraq's sovereignty" and denied that they were coordinated by the Baghdad government.
The Israeli army on Saturday said it killed dozens of Palestinians across Gaza over the past 24 hours, Haaretz reported.
The army said forces were directed to the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza and to Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Syria's foreign ministry on Saturday condemned overnight US air strikes against more than 85 targets in Syria and Iraq.
"What [the US] committed has served to fuel conflict in the Middle East in a very dangerous way," Damascus's foreign ministry said in a statement.
The United Arab Emirates has allocated $5m in support of efforts of the Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa.
The funds will go towards the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, the state news agency WAM reported on Saturday.
The decision comes after a number of countries, including the US, UK, Switzerland, Finland and Germany, cut off funds for the organisation after Israel accused 12 of the organisation's thousands of employees of being involved in the 7 October attack on Israel.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has expressed that Israel plans to expand its ground assault into Rafah.
"The Khan Younis Brigade of the Hamas organisation is disbanded, we will complete the mission there and continue to Rafah," Gallant said in a post on the social media platform X late on Thursday. "We will continue until the end, there is no other way."
The comments have spread fear amongst Palestinians in Rafah, where around 1.9 million Palestinians, who have been forcibly displaced from other areas, are crammed.
Palestinians in Rafah have been forced to sleep in residential buildings or on the streets, as air strikes continue to target the area and surrounding areas.
Good evening Middle East Eye readers,
At least 27,131 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli attacks since 7 October, while another 66,287 have been wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said on Friday.
It added that 112 Palestinians have been killed and 148 wounded over the past 24 hours.
Unicef estimates that almost all the children in the Gaza Strip require mental health support. Prior to 7 October, the agency estimated that 50,000 children were in need of help.
In other developments:
- On Friday evening, the United States initiated its initial round of counterstrikes against Iran-supported groups in Iraq and Syria.
- More than 800 European and American officials published an open letter on Friday condemning Israel’s war on Gaza as “one of the worst human catastrophes of this century.”
- 25 Palestinians, including a woman, an injured person and several children, have been arrested following raids by Israeli occupation forces in towns across the West Bank.
- Satellite imagery shows that 30 percent of Gaza has been destroyed or damaged, according to the United Nations Satellite Centre.
- Canada is considering implementing sanctions against "extremist" settlers in the West Bank, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Friday.
- US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that a Security Council resolution proposed by Algeria might risk undermining "sensitive negotiations" intended to facilitate a ceasefire in Gaza.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to visit the Middle East next week.
The White House said that the United States had notified Iraq prior to Friday's strikes on three locations within the country.
This announcement came shortly after Iraq's military criticised the strikes as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
"We did inform the Iraqi government prior to the strikes," White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.
He added that the US believes the strikes were successful and that they do not know how many fighters were killed or wounded.
According to Kirby, the US is not looking for war with Iran and that there has been no communication with Iran since the attack that killed three US troops in Jordan.
The Iraqi military reported that US air strikes were carried out in areas along the Iraqi border on Saturday, cautioning that these attacks might lead to regional instability.
"These airstrikes constitute a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government, and pose a threat that could lead Iraq and the region into dire consequences," Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasool said in a statement.
US President Joe Biden announced Friday afternoon that, under his command, US military forces targeted facilities in Iraq and Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and allied militias to launch attacks against US forces.
Biden added that the US response “began today and will continue at times and places of our choosing”.
He also said that the US is not pursuing conflict in the Middle East or any other part of the globe.
This comes after US Central Command released a statement saying its forces struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria, targeting IRGC in addition to other affiliated armed groups in the two countries.
On Friday evening, the United States initiated its initial round of counterstrikes against Iran-supported groups in Iraq and Syria.
This action was in response to a sequence of attacks on an American base in Jordan, which resulted in the deaths of three soldiers.
US Central Command announced that its forces have conducted strikes on over 85 sites in Iraq and Syria, aiming at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and various other associated militias within both nations.
Syrian state media reported several strikes in the country’s desert areas on the border with Iraq, and reported casualties without further detail.
The attack in Jordan took place on Sunday near the border with Syria, and left three US soldiers dead while injuring more than 30 others.
Yemen's Houthis executed a military strike targeting the Israeli city of Eilat using ballistic missiles, according to the group's military spokesperson on Friday.
Previously, the Israeli military reported that its "Arrow" air defence system effectively intercepted a surface-to-surface missile aimed at Israeli territory on Friday, in the vicinity of the Red Sea.
