PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Israeli air strikes targeted homes in southern Gaza, witnesses said on Friday, adding to what aid groups describe as an increasingly hopeless humanitarian situation despite efforts towards new truce talks.
An Israeli delegation led by the head of the country's overseas intelligence agency arrived in Paris on Friday to "unblock" talks for a ceasefire in Gaza, an Israeli official said.
Mossad director David Barnea will be joined in the French capital by his counterpart at the domestic Shin Bet security agency, Ronen Bar, Israeli media reported.
His trip follows what the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said was the death of more than 100 people over the previous day.
Hamas wants a complete ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the demands as "bizarre."
He has said his government is open to a pause in the fighting but has vowed to press on until "total victory" and the complete destruction of Hamas. Netanyahu is also against the release of Palestinian prisoners who took part in Hamas attacks against Israel.
Israeli bombardment destroyed one house and left a gaping hole in the earth east of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where about 1.4 million Gazans have converged in a futile search to escape the fighting.
"We were sleeping in our house when we heard the sound of a missile," said Abdul Hamid Abu el-Enein.
"We rushed to the site and found people martyred and injured" in the strike, which "completely erased" the two-storey home.
Witnesses reported several other houses targeted during the night, and an AFP reporter described heavy strikes in the city of Khan Yunis several kilometres (miles) to the north, as well as in Rafah itself.
Israel's military said fighting, including with drone strikes and sniper fire, continued in the western Khan Yunis area.
More than four months of fighting and bombardment have flattened much of Gaza and pushed its population of around 2.4 million to the brink of famine as disease spreads, according to the United Nations.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA has blamed "limitations on the entry of aid" as well as the combat and growing insecurity for severely hampering assistance.
The war started after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Hamas militants also took hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 30 presumed dead, according to Israel.
'Appalled'
Israel's retaliatory campaign, aiming to destroy Hamas, has killed at least 29,514 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest count by Gaza's health ministry.
The toll has seen pressure grow on the administration of US President Joe Biden to rein in its ally Israel, which it provides with billions of dollars in military aid.
On Tuesday, Washington for the third time vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The vote came as Israel threatened to move troops into Rafah, a plan that has sparked widespread international alarm.
The head of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity, Christopher Lockyear, told the Council he was "appalled" by Washington's willingness "to obstruct efforts to adopt the most evident of resolutions. One demanding an immediate and sustained ceasefire."
The United States ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said she could not support a resolution that "put sensitive negotiations" in jeopardy.
Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, held talks this week with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv, after meeting with other mediators in Cairo.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was in the Egyptian capital for truce talks earlier in the week, the group said.
Washington's National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, told journalists that so far the discussions were "going well."
Israeli media reported on Friday that Barnea would be joined by Ronen Bar, chief of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, for the talks in Paris.
Barnea and his US counterpart from the CIA helped broker a week-long truce in November that saw the release of 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's war cabinet, spoke this week of "the first signs that indicate the possibility of progress" towards a new hostage release deal.
'Die hungry'
At Rafah's Najjar hospital on Friday, mourners grieved over two dead children whose faces poked through white shrouds.
Mahmud Jarghun said he had no hope in the negotiations because "the intention is to annihilate the Palestinian people."
"I want to die hungry," he said, so "God will hold them accountable for what we are suffering from."
Fierce gun battles occurred in the neighbouring Zeitun district, where tanks were deployed, according to witnesses. The army said helicopters were in action to support "targeted raids" in the area.
"I fear we are on the edge of a monumental disaster with grave implications for regional peace, security and human rights," said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main aid agency in Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
In a letter to the United Nations General Assembly, he said UNRWA "has reached a breaking point." As donors freeze funding, Israel exerts pressure to dismantle the agency and humanitarian needs soar.
UNRWA employs around 30,000 people in the occupied territories, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Several leading donors have suspended funding to UNRWA in response to Israeli allegations that some of its staff participated in the October 7 attack on Israel.
The UN fired the employees accused by Israel and has begun an internal probe of UNRWA, but Lazzarini said Israel has provided no evidence against the 12 it accuses.
The head of OCHA, Martin Griffiths, joined the chiefs of almost 20 other UN and external aid groups in an appeal Wednesday for "an immediate ceasefire," the restoration of UNRWA funding, and other measures "so that we can provide, at the very least, the bare essentials," including drinking water and food.
Under a post-war plan for Gaza proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, UNRWA would be dismantled, according to The Times of Israel newspaper.
The plan envisages Gaza's civil affairs being run by local Palestinian officials without links to Hamas or its foreign backers. It also rejects "unilateral recognition" of a Palestinian state, the report said.
With Arab support, the United States has called for a pathway to a Palestinian state in an effort to ensure peace.
