Gazans killed with impunity --- KUWAIT TIMES

GAZA: The Zionist entity struck Gaza targets Sunday in its war on Hamas sparked by the Oct 7 attacks, as international concern deepened over the mounting civilian death toll on the third day of fighting after a truce ended. More than 15,500 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory, according to the Gaza health ministry, in more than eight weeks of combat and heavy bombardment. But the White House believes the Zionist entity is “making an effort” to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza, a senior official said Sunday. Speaking on the US Sunday talk shows, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also insisted that US intelligence was unaware of any secret, advance Hamas blueprint for its Oct 7 attack on the Zionist entity. The New York Times reported last week that Zionist authorities had obtained such a document a year before the attack occurred. Kirby told ABC’s “This Week” that the Zionist entity had responded to US appeals to protect civilians. “We believe they have been receptive to our messages here of trying to minimalize civilian casualties,” he said, including by publishing online a map of places where Gazans could go to find safety. “There’s not a whole lot of modern militaries that would do that... to telegraph their punches in that way. So they are making an effort.” Zionist air and artillery strikes hit Gaza’s northern frontier with the Zionist entity, throwing thick clouds of smoke and dust into the sky. The Zionist army reported 17 rocket salvos from Gaza into the Zionist entity on Sunday, adding that most were intercepted and there was only slight material damage. The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said at least 160 Palestinian deaths were reported in two incidents in northern Gaza Saturday: The bombing of a six-storey building in Jabalia refugee camp, and of an entire block in Gaza City. Repeated bursts of heavy automatic weapons fire were heard over an AFPTV livecam. A seven-day truce, brokered by Qatar with support from Egypt and the United States, led to the release of 80 Zionist captives in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners before it expired early Friday. More than two dozen other captives were freed from Gaza under separate arrangements. The Zionist entity has unleashed an air and ground campaign with the stated aim of destroying Hamas, which authorities say has killed mostly women and children. The Zionist military said it had carried out around 10,000 air strikes since the war started. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk voiced alarm that hundreds of thousands of Gazans “are being confined into ever smaller areas” in the southern of the territory. “There is no safe place in Gaza,” he said. Hamas and another militant group, Islamic Jihad, announced “rocket barrages” against multiple Zionist cities and towns including Tel Aviv, and the Zionist entity said two of its soldiers had died in combat, the first since the truce ended. Fighting also flared on the Zionist entity’s northern border with Lebanon. The Zionist army said it had launched artillery strikes in response to cross-border fire, and its fighter jets hit a number of targets linked to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Iran-backed Hezbollah said it had launched several attacks on Zionist positions, including a missile strike on a military vehicle. The Zionist entity’s ally the United States, which provides it with billions of dollars in military aid annually, has intensified calls for the protection of Gaza’s civilians. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters at UN climate talks in Dubai. In a new estimate, OCHA said around 1.8 million people in Gaza, roughly 75 percent of the population, had been displaced, many to overcrowded and unsanitary shelters. Jumana Murad said her son Mohammad, 19, was killed as he tried to help women and children out of a tent inside a school. “A piece of shrapnel hit him in the head,” she told AFP before bursting into tears. Nasser hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis overflowed with both the wounded and the dead. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that some patients there were being treated on the floor, in conditions “unimaginable for the provision of healthcare”. Gazans are short of food, water and other essentials, and the aid reaching them is “a drop in the ocean of needs,” said Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Pope Francis deplored “so much suffering in Gaza”, and urged those involved to reach a new ceasefire deal. On Saturday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Zionist negotiators were being withdrawn from Qatar “following the impasse in the negotiations” aimed at renewing the truce. As fighting continues, Hamas has ruled out more captive releases until a permanent ceasefire is agreed. “The price to pay for the release of Zionist prisoners will be the release of all our prisoners — after a ceasefire,” Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’s politburo, said on Saturday, referring to thousands of Palestinians held in Zionist jails. There are still 137 captives held in Gaza, the Zionist entity’s army said. Britain’s defence ministry said that it would conduct surveillance flights over the Zionist entity and Gaza “in support of the ongoing hostage rescue activity”. Netanyahu said the war would continue “until we achieve all its aims” — among them freeing the captives — and that soldiers had prepared during the truce “for total victory against Hamas”. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday drew on his experience fighting the Islamic State group in urging the Zionist entity to protect non-combatants. “The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians,” he told a forum in California. Most Gazans are trapped, but an Egyptian border crossing, after a closure on Friday, reopened to enable 880 foreign and dual nationals to cross on Saturday along with 13 injured people, the UN said. – AFP