Fighting rages across Gaza where death toll surges

– Fighting raged on Saturday across the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, whose health ministry reported a surging death toll, as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said four of its members were killed by a strike in Syria that it blamed on Israel.

The Syria strike is the latest regional incident raising fears of wider conflagration.

It came even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Joe Biden discussed the post-war future of Gaza where the humanitarian situation remains dire.

Gaza’s health ministry reported at least 165 people killed over the previous 24 hours — by far the largest such toll it has issued in days, and more than double the previous day’s figure.

An AFP correspondent reported gunfire, air strikes and tank shelling into the morning, particularly in southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis city.

Israel is pressing its push southwards against Hamas militants, after the army in early January said the Hamas command structure in northern Gaza had been dismantled, leaving only isolated fighters.

But the armed wing of Hamas reported fierce combat with Israeli troops in north Gaza on Saturday.

The military said troops backed by air and naval support were striking militant infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip, including the north.

– Spy chief –

Also on Saturday an Israeli strike on Damascus killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ spy chief for Syria and three other Guards members, Iranian media reported.

Israel has intensified attacks on targets in Syria, often against Iran-backed forces, since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

Hamas, like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, is an ally of Israel’s arch-foe Iran.

The unprecedented October attacks by Hamas resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response. Its relentless bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 24,927 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The United States provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid but has urged it to take more care to protect civilians, and the two sides have disagreed over Gaza’s future governance.

Biden said it was still possible Netanyahu could agree to some form of Palestinian state, after the two leaders spoke for the first time in nearly a month.

Netanyahu had said on Thursday that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River”, which “contradicts the idea of (Palestinian) sovereignty”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Israel could not achieve “genuine security” without a “pathway to a Palestinian state” — a goal sought by Palestinians for decades.

The United Nations estimates the war has displaced 1.7 million people, about one million of whom are crowded into the Rafah area in Gaza’s far south, near Egypt.

UN agencies have warned better aid access — including through Israel’s Ashdod port — is needed urgently as famine and disease loom.

After Friday’s call, the White House said Israel would allow flour shipments for Palestinians through Ashdod.

– Neither bread, nor water –

Bread is a staple food for Palestinians but aid agencies said only 15 bakeries were operational across Gaza, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA reported.

The availability of water for drinking and domestic use “is shrinking every day”, OCHA added.

Nearly 20,000 babies have been born in conditions “beyond belief” in Gaza since the start of the Israeli offensive, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said.

Thousands of Gazan men may have been detained by Israeli forces during the war, often facing conditions that could amount to torture, the UN’s human rights representative in the Palestinian territories, Ajith Sunghay, said on Friday.

Israel’s military responded that individuals suspected of involvement in “terrorist activities” were being detained and questioned. It said they are treated in accordance with international law.

During the October attacks militants seized about 250 hostages, around 132 of whom Israel says remain in Gaza. At least 27 captives are believed to have been killed, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 360 people since October 7, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The White House said Friday it was “seriously concerned” about reports a Palestinian teenager with US citizenship had been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank.

Deadly exchanges of fire have occurred regularly between Israeli forces and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, whose deputy leader Haim Qassem on Friday warned: “If Israel decides to expand its aggression, it will receive a real slap in the face”.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006. Lebanon and Israel remain technically at war, with border disputes plaguing the relationship.

An American drone crashed north of Baghdad, a US defence official said Friday, after Iran-backed militants claimed they fired on an unmanned aircraft flying over Iraq.

The US also said its military carried out a sixth round of strikes against Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels, targeting missile launchers preparing for attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

The Huthis, targeting what they deem Israeli-linked vessels, have professed defiance in the face of the strikes, also by Britain.

“We swear to God. We will fight you on land, sea, and air, and wherever we find you,” Naji Siraj, a Huthi fighter, said in the rebel-held capital Sanaa at a rally which appeared to be attended by tens of thousands.