Israel presses Gaza assault as top US official visits

Israel pressed its offensive in Gaza on Friday despite mounting international calls for restraint, with key backer the United States saying the war to crush Hamas must not lead to a long-term Israeli occupation of the territory.

The war began after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October that Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Vowing to destroy Hamas and bring home an estimated 250 hostages taken by militants into Gaza, Israel launched a massive military offensive that has left much of the besieged territory in ruins.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says the war has killed more than 18,700 people, mostly women and children.

Late Thursday in the southern city of Rafah near the Egyptian border, crowds of Palestinians used flashlights to search under the rubble of buildings for survivors following an Israeli strike.

“This is a residential neighbourhood, women and children live here, as you can see,” said resident Abu Omar. “Three missiles on a residential neighbourhood that has nothing to do with any militant activities.”

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said troops were engaged in fighting with militants in two districts of Gaza City late Thursday.

“There will be more tough battles in the days to come,” he said.

The Israeli army said Friday that 117 troops had died in Gaza since the start of the ground offensive.

It said the body of a French-Israeli hostage kidnapped on 7 October, Elia Toledano, was recovered and returned to Israel.

“We are working together with security agencies, and with all intelligence and operational means in order to return all of the hostages home,” the army said.

The United States, which provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, has strongly backed its response to Hamas’s attacks, but has voiced increasing concern over civilian casualties and the long-term plan for Gaza.

“We do not believe that it makes sense for Israel, or is right for Israel, to... reoccupy Gaza over the long term,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Friday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv.

Gallant warned that Israel’s fight with Hamas “will require a period of time -- it will last more than several months, but we will win and we will destroy them”.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden urged Israel to take more care to protect civilians in Gaza.

“I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives -- not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful,” said Biden.

But Netanyahu vowed to carry on “until victory”, and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the war would continue “with or without international support”.

Sullivan headed to the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday for talks with its Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders, who have lost even more public support since the war in Gaza.

The West Bank, where the PA exercises limited control, has seen a surge in violence since 7 October.

There, the Palestinian health ministry said 11 people had been killed since the Israeli military launched a raid in the city of Jenin and its refugee camp earlier this week.

The war in Gaza has led to increased popular support for Hamas in the West Bank, further weakening the internationally recognised PA.
This week, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a non-binding resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza, with Washington voting against it.

The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, and the head of its agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, warned of a “breakdown of civil order”.

“Everywhere you go, people are desperate, hungry and terrified,” said Lazzarini, who recently returned from Gaza.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA says more than a third of households have reported severe hunger, while more than 90 per cent are “going to bed hungry”.

Adding to the desperation, mobile and internet communications were cut Thursday and yet to return the following day, with operator Paltel blaming “the cut off of main fibre routes from the Israeli side”.

“Gaza is... blacked out again,” PalTel said, with global network monitor Netblocks confirming the blackout.

Hamas’s media office described it as a “premeditated crime that deepens the humanitarian crisis” by making it harder for rescuers to reach injured people.

Aid distribution has largely stopped in most of Gaza, except on a limited basis in the Rafah area, according to the UN.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said the military “is enabling tactical pauses for humanitarian purposes”.

Fears of a wider regional conflagration persist, and Yemen’s Huthi rebels struck a cargo ship in the Red Sea on Friday, causing a fire on deck in the latest of a near-daily series of attacks in the commercially vital waterway.

The Iran-backed Huthis, who control much of Yemen but are not recognised internationally, say they’re targeting shipping to pressure Israel during its war with Hamas.

“While the Huthis are pulling the trigger, so to speak, they’re being handed the gun by Iran,” said Sullivan.

A more precise picture of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel has emerged from social security data, confirming the unprecedented scale of the violence but also challenging some initial testimonies.

The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.

This excludes five people, among them four Israelis, still listed as missing by the prime minister’s office.

The violence began when armed men from the Palestinian Islamist movement broke through the militarised border with Gaza on Shabbat, the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Under the cover of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza, they killed indiscriminately in streets, houses, kibbutz communities and at a rave music festival.

It took more than three days of heavy fighting for the Israeli army to regain control, and left the country deeply traumatised by violence unseen since the country’s formation in 1948.

Police are still working to assess the scale of the sexual violence that was reported alongside the killings.

On 14 October, Israeli authorities announced a preliminary toll of more than 1,400 people killed by “Hamas terrorists”.

On 10 November, the foreign ministry published an “updated estimate”, saying the number “murdered in cold blood” was around 1,200 people, without further details.

With many of the bodies mutilated or burned beyond recognition -- including entire families in their homes -- it has taken forensic doctors weeks to identify them all.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the attack. Its air and ground offensive has killed more than 18,700 people, mostly women and children, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and left much of the territory in ruins.

The identities and ages of civilian victims are available via Bituah Leumi, Israel’s social security agency.

Its website lists 695 people killed during the attack, with names and the circumstances of their deaths.

Among them are 36 children, including 20 under 15 years old and 10 killed by rockets.

The youngest victim was 10-month-old Mila Cohen, shot and killed at Kibbutz Beeri.

An entire family, including three children aged between two and six, were killed in their home at Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Elsewhere, two brothers aged five and eight were shot dead in their car with their parents.

A five-year-old boy was killed in the street by a rocket.

The data gives a clear picture of the scale of the atrocities at the Supernova music festival in Reim where 364 people were killed.

But it also invalidates some statements by Israeli authorities in the days following the attack.

In particular, a claim made on 10 October on the government’s official X (formerly Twitter) account spoke of “40 babies murdered” at Kfar Aza kibbutz, based on a report by i24NEWS channel.

Questioned by AFP the following day, Israel’s foreign ministry, which runs the X account, said it could not “confirm any number at this stage”.

According to Bituah Leumi, 46 civilians were killed in Kfar Aza, the youngest 14 years old.

Another testimony called into question was that on 27 October by Colonel Golan Vach, head of the army’s search and rescue unit, who told a group of journalists, including one from AFP, that he “personally” transported “a decapitated baby” found in the arms of his mother in the Beeri kibbutz.
According to Bituah Leumi, only one baby was killed in Beeri: the 10-month-old Mila Cohen, whose mother survived.

Army spokespersons did not respond to queries by AFP.

The extreme nature of the violence can make it hard for responders to be accurate in their testimonies, said members of Zaka, an emergency response NGO that helped collect victims’ bodies.

“When we find bodies that are burned or in a state of decomposition, we can easily be mistaken and think the body is a child’s,” said Haim Otmazgin, a Zaka leader.

One Zaka volunteer had, for example, spoken on 11 October of 20 children with their “hands tied in the back, shot and burned” in Beeri, but ultimately only nine children died there.

“Our volunteers were confronted with traumatic scenes and sometimes misinterpreted what they saw,” said Otmazgin.

There were also 71 foreign victims on 7 October, mostly Thai workers.
And in the fighting to regain control of southern Israel, 58 police, 10 members of internal security service Shin Bet, and 305 soldiers were killed, including several dozen unarmed soldiers guarding the border with Gaza.

Israel counts both soldiers killed in action and off-duty soldiers in its military casualties, and so these figures include, for example, some who died at the Supernova festival or while visiting their family in the south.

The Bituah Leumi data does not distinguish between those killed by Hamas and civilians killed by Israeli forces in the fighting to retake control of southern Israel, an operation in which the army used shells and rockets on inhabited areas, according to testimonies collected by AFP and Israeli media.

It is also unclear how many Palestinian militants were killed on Israeli soil.
The army said on 10 October that it had found “around 1,500 bodies” of attackers, without giving further details. The army and defence ministry did not respond to queries from AFP on this topic.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Hamas second-in-command Saleh al-Aruri said “around 1,200 fighters” took part in the 7 October attack.

Israel also faces the ongoing trauma of some 250 hostages who were dragged back to Gaza in the attack, according to Israeli authorities.

Since then, 110 have been released, most during a one-week truce in November, and eight bodies of hostages have been returned.

Israel says Hamas still holds 132 hostages, including 19 presumed dead.