US VP Harris calls for restraint as Israel strikes southern Gaza

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© Reuters. Palestinians flee their houses due to Israeli strikes, after a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel expired, in the eastern part of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, December 1, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
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By Suhaib Salem and Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) -U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said too many innocent Palestinians had been killed in Gaza as Israeli war planes and artillery bombarded the enclave on Saturday following the collapse of a truce with Hamas militants.

Residents feared the barrages were a prelude to an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory that would pen them into a shrinking area and possibly try to push them across into Egypt.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed and 650 wounded since the truce ended on Friday morning – adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinian dead since the start of the war.

Speaking in Dubai, Harris said Israel had a right to defend itself, but international and humanitarian law must be respected and “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”.

“Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering, and the images and videos coming from Gaza, are devastating,” Harris told reporters.

She also sketched out a U.S. vision for post-conflict Gaza, saying the international community must support recovery and Palestinian security forces must be strengthened.

“We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the center of this work,” she said, adding that Hamas must no longer run Gaza.

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority governs parts of the occupied West Bank. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ mainstream Fatah party and has ruled the enclave ever since.

Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas once and for all, saying the Islamist group is bent on its destruction.

Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel did not want to see Gaza’s civilians caught in the crossfire.

ISRAEL SEEKS ‘SECURITY ENVELOPE’

“Israel is targeting Hamas, a brutal terrorist organization that has committed the most horrific violence against innocent civilians. Israel is making a maximum effort to safeguard Gaza’s civilians,” Regev said.

He said that when the war was over, Israel would seek a “security envelope” with special zones and arrangements to prevent Hamas from being positioned on its border.

Throughout Saturday morning, a steady stream of wounded people were carried into the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, some receiving treatment on the floor.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the renewed fighting was intense.

“It’s a new layer of destruction coming on top of massive, unparalleled destruction,” Robert Mardini told Reuters in Dubai.

With conditions inside Gaza reaching “breaking point”, in Mardini’s words, the first aid trucks since the end of the truce entered from Egypt through the Rafah crossing on Saturday, Egyptian security and Red Crescent sources said.

A senior official said Israel would facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilians.

The warring sides blamed each other for the collapse of the seven-day truce, during which Hamas had released hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Israel said on Saturday it had recalled a team from Qatar, host of indirect negotiations with Hamas, accusing the Palestinian faction of reneging on a deal to free all the women and children it was holding.

French President Francois Macron meanwhile said he was heading to Qatar to work on a new truce.

The conflict broke out on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants crossed into southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. More than 200 hostages were taken back into Gaza.

Israel responded with a bombing campaign and a ground offensive in the north, destroying swathes of Gaza.

SOUTH TARGETED

The southern part of Gaza including Khan Rounis and Rafah was being pounded on Saturday. Residents said houses had been hit and three mosques destroyed in Khan Younis. Columns of smoke rose into the sky.

Displaced Gazans have been sheltering in Khan Younis and Rafah because of fighting in the north, but residents said they feared Israeli troops were preparing to move south.

“This is the same tactic they used before entering Gaza and the north,” said Yamen, who gave only his first name.

Yamen fled to Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza from the north after Israel destroyed several districts there.

“Where to after Deir Al-Balah, after Khan Younis? I don’t know where I would take my wife and six children.”

On Saturday morning, Israeli air strikes hit areas close to the Nasser Hospital six times, medics and witnesses said.

The hospital is filled with thousands of displaced and hundreds of wounded, including many of those who had been evacuated from north Gaza hospitals.

“A night of horror,” said Samira, a mother of four. “It was one of the worst nights we spent in Khan Younis in the past six weeks since we arrived here … We are so afraid they will enter Khan Younis.”

Among the dead on Saturday was the president of the territory’s Islamic University, a theoretical physicist and applied mathematician killed with his family when a house was bombed, health officials said.

MILITANT TARGETS

The Israeli military said that in the space of 24 hours its ground, air and naval forces had hit 400 militant targets and killed an unspecified number of Hamas fighters.

These included many in northern Gaza, some in a gun battle at a mosque used by Islamic Jihad militants as a command post.

Hamas said its forces had killed and injured a number of Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza.

Leaflets dropped by Israel on eastern areas of Khan Younis ordered residents of four towns to evacuate – not to other areas in Khan Younis as in the past, but further south to Rafah.

Residents took to the road with belongings heaped up in carts, searching for shelter further west.

Reuters could not confirm the battlefield accounts.