Israel’s war on Gaza live: Rafah bombarded as Israel plans ground assault

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has said that it is “extremely concerned” over Israel’s intensifying strikes on Rafah in Gaza’s south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering.

“We are extremely concerned by Israel’s escalating attacks on the southern city of Rafah, following the destruction and massacres it has already inflicted on the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said in a statement.

“We consider this operation as part of a plan to expel the people of Gaza from their own land,” it added.

“We call on the international community, in particular the UN Security Council, to take the necessary steps to stop Israel,” the statement also said.

Israel has called on UN relief agencies to help with its efforts to evacuate civilians from Gaza war zones ahead of its planned ground sweep of Rafah, a town on the enclave’s border with Egypt which is crowded with displaced Palestinians.

“We urge UN agencies to cooperate,” government spokesperson Eylon Levy said in a briefing.

“Don’t say it can’t be done. Work with us to find a way.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has said that by “killing, destroying, and trying to displace Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, Israel wants to reshape the demographic balance to its advantage, after it shifted in favour of Palestine, for the first time since 1948”, according to the Wafa news agency.

Speaking at the beginning of the weekly cabinet session held in Ramallah, Shtayyeh said that the past 400 days were the bloodiest in the contemporary history of Palestine.

“We have more than 100,000 Palestinians killed, wounded and missing in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, and more than 640 in the West Bank,” he claimed.

“There are also more than 10,000 detainees, and these are not numbers, but rather they indicate children, women, the elderly, young men and women, and they indicate our families and our people, each of them has a history, status, and name, and had a future that was killed by Israel.”

Daniel Hagari has issued a statement in which he said the overnight rescue mission “underscores the importance of our ground operation in Gaza, including Rafah, when conditions allow”.

He added that the Israeli military has a “moral obligation” to bring all the captives home, an obligation it will continue to do everything in its power to fulfil.

The spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza says Israeli snipers have killed seven people inside Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, where heavy fighting has been reported in recent days.

“No one can move in the yards of Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis,” Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement on Telegram.

“Israeli snipers killed seven citizens and wounded 14 staff and displaced people inside the yard [of the hospital],” he added.

He said that ceilings in the dormitory and operations departments collapsed as a result of the explosions around the hospital.

“We need the protection of the technical staff to move in the yard of the hospital to repair the sewage network,” al-Qudra said.

Dozens of protesters are blocking trucks carrying vital humanitarian aid from entering Israel from Egypt at the Nitzana border crossing, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

In recent weeks, there have been regular protests to block aid to the Gaza Strip, in particular at the Karam Abu Salem border crossing, known as Kerem Shalom in Israel.

Protesters often include family members of captives being held by Hamas who demand that their release should come before any more humanitarian aid can cross.

Israeli security forces have arrested at least 35 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since Sunday night, including a wounded minor and a former prisoner, according to an advocacy group.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said on Telegram that the arrests were mostly in the city of Hebron, while others were made in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin and Qalqilya, as well as in East Jerusalem.

The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad says its fighters ambushed Israeli troops early on Monday morning in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, where intense fighting has been reported in recent days.

“Immediately upon the [Israeli] forces’ arrival at the site of the ambush, [al-Quds Brigades] attacked them with machineguns, antipersonnel shells, fortifications and explosive devices, leaving the enemies dead and wounded,” al-Quds Brigades said in a statement on Telegram.

It said its fighters bombarded an Israeli command and control post in central Khan Younis with heavy mortar shells.

Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/2/12/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israel-planning-rafah-assault-as-talks-continue