Israeli Tanks Push Deeper into Gaza, as Biden Urges Peace
Editor
22 August 2024 21:42 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Cairo - Israeli forces pressed deeper into areas of the central and southern Gaza Strip as they battled Hamas fighters, while Palestinian health officials said on Thursday, August 22, that Israeli strikes had killed at least 27 people across the enclave.
The new escalation comes hours after U.S. President Joe Biden pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the urgency of sealing a deal for a truce in Gaza and the release of hostages, the White House said.
Months of on-off talks on a ceasefire have circled the same issues, but Israel and Hamas have stuck firmly to their demands.
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, a strike on a house killed 11 people, including children and women, the bodies of some of whom had been burnt, according to the Hamas-run territory's Civil Emergency Service.
Medics said another strike killed six people, including a local journalist, in a house in Al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, medics said while five others were killed in separate strikes in the south.
Later on Thursday, five Palestinians were killed and several wounded in an Israeli airstrike that hit people near a square in Khan Younis, health officials said.
The Israeli military said its forces had intensified their operations in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, and Khan Younis, in the south, dismantling dozens of military structures, locating rockets, and killing militants, over the past 24 hours.
It said forces killed 50 militants in the area of Rafah, in the far south of the enclave, over the past day.
The armed wing of Hamas said fighters ambushed an Israeli force in Rafah, killing and wounding several of them.
A phone call between Biden and Netanyahu late on Wednesday followed a whirlwind trip to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that ended on Tuesday without producing a breakthrough in the 10-month-old war.
Hamas wants a deal that ends the war in Gaza and releases Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza in return for the freedom of many Palestinians jailed by Israel. It blames Israel and the United States for the failure to conclude a deal.
Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is defeated, and that a ceasefire to allow the exchange of hostages and prisoners would be only a temporary pause while the militant group remains a threat. He denies obstructing a deal.
