Israel announced today that around 300 Hamas fighters were killed in a military operation since the beginning of May in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
"We have already eliminated about 300 terrorists in Rafah so far in that operation," said government spokesman David Mencer.
The Israeli military launched a ground operation in Rafah on May 7 despite strong opposition from the international community, concerned for the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians who have taken refuge in the city from clashes elsewhere in Gaza.
According to the UN, there were 1,4 million people in Rafah before the attack.
Early this morning, Israel's military said its forces attacked more than 50 targets across Gaza the day before.
The soldiers found weapons, explosives, tunnel entrances in Rafah and confronted armed fighters in Jabalia, the same source said.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by the attack by Hamas on October 7 last year in the south of Israel, where more than 1.189 people, mostly civilians, died, according to France Press.
Of the 252 hostages originally held in Gaza, some of whom were released, 121 were held and 37 died or were killed.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization.
36.224 people died in Gaza during the war, according to the data of the Ministry of Health there.
(Beta)
Israeli forces killed at least 12 Palestinians in an early air strike on Rafah in southern Gaza, and fighting raged in several other areas of the coastal enclave, medics in Gaza said, Reuters reports.
Israel resumed its offensive in the Rafah a day after it said its forces had taken control of a buffer zone along the nearby border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, giving it effective control over the entire Gaza land border.
The capture of the buffer zone was said to have cut off a route used by the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas to smuggle weapons into Gaza during more than seven months of war, which has devastated much of the territory and sparked fears of famine.
Medical sources in Gaza said 12 Palestinians, said to be civilians, were killed and an unspecified number of others wounded in an Israeli airstrike while trying to recover a civilian's body in central Rafah.
Another Palestinian civilian was killed in an airstrike on the al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza in the north of the densely populated enclave, doctors said.
Israel reported clashes in southern, central and northern Gaza but did not immediately comment on the reported deaths in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians took refuge earlier in the war.
Israel's military has lifted a ban on food sales to Gaza from Israel and the occupied West Bank as its battlefield offensive stifles international aid, Palestinian officials, businessmen and international aid workers say, Reuters reports.
Military authorities gave Gaza traders the green light to resume buying food from Israeli and Palestinian food suppliers such as fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy products this month, days after Israeli forces launched an assault on the enclave's southernmost town of Rafah, the people said.
The offensive on Rafah, a key passage into Gaza from Egypt, has halted the flow of UN aid to the devastated Palestinian territory. Israel is under increasing global pressure to ease the crisis as aid agencies warn of impending famine.
"Israel telephoned distributors in Gaza who bought goods from the West Bank and Israel before the war," said Ayed Abu Ramadan, president of the Gaza Chamber of Commerce. "He told them he was ready to coordinate the pickup of the goods."
Reuters, which has interviewed dozens of people familiar with the development, is the first news agency to report the details and impact of this resumption of commercial food shipments intended for sale in Gaza's markets and shops.
The change marks the first time any goods made in Israel or the West Bank, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, have been allowed into Gaza since the war broke out in October last year, according to Palestinian officials, traders and residents.
When asked by Reuters about resuming deliveries, COGAT, the branch of the Israeli military in charge of aid transfers, said it was looking for ways to increase humanitarian aid and increase the amount of food for sale in Gaza.
"Allowing the private sector to bring some food into the Gaza Strip is part of those efforts to increase the amount of food coming in," spokesman Shimon Friedman added.
For months, aid workers have called on Israel to allow more commercial deliveries into Gaza so that fresh food can supplement international aid, which mostly consists of non-perishable products such as flour and canned food.
However, reopening is not a panacea, according to Reuters.
The flow of deliveries, carried out through the Kerem Shalom border crossing between southern Gaza and Israel, is erratic, according to Palestinian officials who said between 20 and 150 trucks - each carrying up to 20 tons of food - enter daily, depending on how many are allowed by Israel.
That's well short of the 600 trucks a day that the U.S. Agency for International Development says is needed to respond to the threat of famine, even when adding in the roughly 4.200 truckloads of food aid -- about 190 a day -- that Israeli officials say is entered Gaza since the start of the attack on Rafah on May 7.
The food arriving is also an expensive and scarce substitute for international aid already paid for by donor countries and organizations, said four aid workers involved in coordinating deliveries to Gaza. They requested anonymity to speak freely about sensitive matters.
Three Gazans interviewed said they had seen products with Hebrew labels in the markets, including watermelons from the Israeli settlement, but that they were often sold at exorbitant prices for cash-strapped and displaced families.
"I bought two eggs for 16 shekels ($5), just because my three-year-old child was crying for eggs," said Abed Abu Mustafa, a father of five from Gaza. "Usually I could buy 30 eggs for less".
According to the agreement, all suppliers and goods must be checked by the Israeli military, according to Wasim al-Jabari, head of the West Bank Food and Industry Union.
Jabari and Abu Ramadan said no free goods or charitable donations from the West Bank or Israel are allowed, only products for sale.
Two distributors inside Gaza declined to say how much they bought and sold the goods for. They pay suppliers in the West Bank by bank transfer and take cash from vendors in local markets.
Goods are also unevenly distributed, with few reaching northern Gaza where the fear of starvation is most acute. "There is plenty of flour here, but little else," lamented Abu Mustafa, a father of five from Gaza City. "And whatever it is, most people can't afford it."
Hamas said it had informed mediators in the ceasefire talks that they were ready to reach a "full agreement" including a comprehensive hostage/prisoner exchange agreement if Israel "stops its war and aggression against the people of Gaza," the group said in a statement. Reuters.
Israel's foreign minister condemned the Slovenian government's decision to recognize an independent Palestinian state.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the decision, which requires the approval of the Slovenian parliament, rewarded Hamas for murder and rape, which refers to the Palestinian Islamist group's October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war, according to Reuters.
In a statement, Katz said the move also strengthened Israel's arch-enemy, Iran, and damaged the "close friendship between the Slovenian and Israeli peoples." He added: "I hope that the Slovenian parliament will reject this recommendation".
Communications services were disrupted in Rafah in southern Gaza due to "ongoing aggression," Palestinian telecommunications company Java said, Reuters reports.
Residents of Rafah said today that the Israeli army was shelling the town in the southern Gaza Strip and that intense gunfire could be heard, as the Israeli army announced it was in control of the strategic buffer zone between the Palestinian territory and Egypt.
Despite international condemnation of Sunday's deadly Israeli attack on a camp for displaced people in Rafah, which killed 45 people, the Israeli military is continuing its airstrikes and ground offensive on the overcrowded city, launched on May 7 in what it said was an attempt to eliminate the last battalions of Hamas.
After the start of military operations in the east of the city, the army advanced to the west, which led to the displacement of about one million people in three weeks, according to UN data.
Most of them were displaced again to places that are already overpopulated in that territory under siege.
The Israeli military said today that it had targeted 50 targets across Gaza in the past few days.
Artillery fire was heard in Zeytun in Gaza City in the north of the Strip, AFP journalists said.
Israeli forces targeted both Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya camp, witnesses said.
The army confirmed that its members came under attack in Jabalija, and that the plane attacked the armed men and killed the duo.
In the center of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians were burying relatives killed in an overnight attack in Nuseirat, a journalist from France Presse said, while children looked at a pile of rubble from a building.
In Rafa, eyewitnesses said that intense shelling and shooting could be heard in the center and in the west.
Many people are fleeing the western part of the city, where at least four bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital after the attack.
The army announced on Wednesday evening that in the past few days it had taken control of the Philadefi corridor, a 14-kilometer-long buffer zone on the border with Egypt along the southern Gaza Strip near Rafah.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the corridor serves as an oxygen pipe for Hamas and that weapons for the Gaza Strip are regularly transported there.
He added that terrorist infrastructure was found to the east of Rafa in a length of one and a half kilometers and about 100 meters from the crossing.
Egypt denies the existence of tunnels under the border and claims that Israel is seeking to justify its offensive in Rafah.
Cairo and Jerusalem are also accused of blocking humanitarian aid through the Rafah border crossing, the only one between the Palestinian territory and Egypt, since the Israeli army took control of the Palestinian side in early May.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza today called for all crossings to be opened in order to facilitate the evacuation of the sick and wounded.
The Rafah is crucial for the entry of aid that is desperately needed by the residents of Gaza, which has been devastated by almost eight months of war, while the UN and non-governmental organizations constantly warn of the danger of starvation.
(Beta)
On May 30, the Government of Slovenia adopted a decision to propose to the National Assembly of that country the recognition of Palestine as an independent and sovereign state.
MPs should decide on this at an extraordinary session on Tuesday next week, reports N1 Slovenia.
The Prime Minister of Slovenia, Robert Golob, said that the government is telling both sides, namely the Palestinian state and Israel, that it wants an immediate end to hostilities and the immediate release of the hostages.
In explaining the decision, the government stated that Slovenia, as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, constantly points to the unsustainability of the current situation due to the unresolved Palestinian issue and the danger of a serious escalation in the region.
It is stated that the recognition will increase international pressure on Israel and Hamas to return to negotiations on a permanent ceasefire and the release of hostages, reports Radio Free Europe.
"This would stop the killing of civilians, enable the delivery of humanitarian aid and the discussion of the necessary steps after the end of the conflict", can be read in the explanation of the proposed decision on the recognition of Palestine.
With this recognition, the Government of Slovenia, as it stated, wants to send a decisive political signal that it is necessary to end as soon as possible the disproportionate Israeli military attack on Gaza, which has so far caused material destruction and an uncontrolled humanitarian crisis.
They also said that the recognition is not a reward for the terrorist movement Hamas, which the USA and the EU have declared as terrorist, for the attack on Israel.
Humanitarian aid for Gaza continues to go to Cyprus by sea and will be held in a floating warehouse outside the enclave until a US-built military dock undergoes repairs, a Cypriot government official said.
The US military said earlier this week that a purpose-built pier anchored off the Gaza coast to receive aid by sea was temporarily removed after part of the structure broke, two weeks after it began operating, Reuters reported.
Israel has sent messages to Tehran through Egypt that it will compromise in Gaza to avoid an Iranian response to an attack on its embassy in Syria, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported, citing the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Forces.
In April, Iran launched explosive drones and fired missiles at Israel in its first direct attack on Israeli territory, a retaliation strike for what it said was an Israeli attack on its consulate in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers.
"Israel has sent messages through the Egyptian foreign minister that it will make a compromise in the war in Gaza in order to avoid Iranian retaliation," Amirali Hadjizadeh said.
More than 36.224 Palestinians have been killed and 81.777 wounded in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza Ministry of Health announced today, Reuters reports.
In the last 24 hours, 53 Palestinians were killed and 357 were injured, the ministry added.
An urgent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is imperative due to the large number of civilian casualties and the extremely worrying humanitarian situation, Chinese President Xi Jinping said.
In a conversation with the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, he indicated that it is necessary to avoid spillover of the conflict to the Middle East region and to prevent an even more catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Xinhua reported.
Xi pointed out that China is deeply saddened by the large number of innocent civilian casualties in Gaza, noting that the two-state solution is important to the Palestinian issue.
He emphasized that Beijing strongly supports Palestine to become a full member of the United Nations.
Al-Sisi called on the international community to ensure that Palestinians are not forcibly displaced from war-torn Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.
"I call on the international community to immediately provide long-term humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, end the Israeli siege and stop any attempt to force Palestinians to leave their country by force," El Sisi said at the China-Arab Cooperation Forum in Beijing.
(MINE)
The Israeli army said it had taken control of the entire border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt, but gave no further details.
The conquest of the Philadelphia strategic corridor indicates that Israel has strengthened its offensive in southern Gaza, reports TVN1.
Israel previously announced that it was conducting only limited operations east of the Rafah along Egypt's border with Gaza.
The United States and other allies of Israel have warned the government in Jerusalem against launching a full-scale offensive against the city, saying it would lead to a humanitarian disaster.
A senior Israeli official has predicted that the war in Gaza against the Palestinian organization Hamas will probably last until the end of the year.
(MINE)
Bonus video:
