There were casualties reported in southern Lebanon, another flashpoint of conflict for Israel. A Lebanese official said Israeli shelling killed three people on Friday. The Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, said it had carried out several attacks on Israeli military positions at the border in support of Palestinians.
The Israeli army said its artillery struck sources of fire from Lebanon and air defences had intercepted two launches. Reuters could not confirm any of the battlefield accounts.
US AND HAMAS TRADE ACCUSATIONS
The United States blamed Hamas for the renewed fighting, saying it had failed to produce a new list of hostages to release.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, ending a trip to the region, said Hamas had started firing rockets before the pause in hostilities expired, had carried out a deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem on Thursday and had not followed through on commitments on hostages.
Democratic US Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Washington should be putting pressure on Israel, telling Reuters: “We should be pushing Israel to realise this is not only a military conflict, but it is a conflict for hearts and minds of people in the world and people in the United States.”
Hamas accused Washington of giving a green light for an Israeli “war of genocide and ethnic cleansing”.
“Today, it brazenly repeats the Zionist lies, which hold Hamas responsible for resuming the war and not extending the humanitarian truce,” it said in a statement.
Israel said its ground, air and naval forces struck more than 200 “terror targets” in Gaza.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces had stopped all deliveries of aid into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
COGAT, the Israeli agency for civilian coordination with the Palestinians, said aid agreed under the truce had been stopped but, at Washington’s request, “dozens” of other trucks with water, food and medical supplies had reached the enclave.
Gazans said they feared the bombing of southern parts of the territory could herald an expansion of the war into areas Israel had previously described as safe.
The United States is working on a plan with Israel to minimise harm to civilians in any military operation in southern Gaza, a senior US official said. Friday’s bombing was most intense in Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, medics and witnesses said. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been sheltering there because of fighting in the north.
Leaflets dropped 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.
“You have been warned,” said the leaflets, written in Arabic.
Israel released a link to a map showing Gaza divided into hundreds of districts, which it said would be used in future to communicate which areas were safe.
In Rafah, residents carried several small children, streaked with blood and covered in dust, out of a house that had been struck. Mohammed Abu-Elneen, whose father owns the house, said it was sheltering people displaced from elsewhere.
Source: CNA
