GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories, Dec  26, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Israel on

Tuesday kept up its strikes against Gaza targets despite grave concern
expressed by the United Nations, and international calls for a halt to the
Israel-Hamas war.
       Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again vowed there would be no peace until
the destruction of Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules Gaza, and the
military said the war would last months.
       Israel's army said it struck military sites and tunnel shafts in Jabalia,
northern Gaza, as well as in Khan Yunis in the south, as heavy ground combat
continued.
       Black smoke clouded the sky over central Gaza on Tuesday afternoon and, in
the south, horse-drawn carts carried some victims to hospital in Khan Yunis,
AFP images showed.
       The withering military campaign in Gaza, launched after unprecedented Hamas
attacks against southern Israeli communities on October 7, has caused mass
civilian casualties, widespread hunger and reduced much of the coastal
territory to rubble.
       Internet and telephone services were again cut across the Palestinian
territory, "due to the ongoing offensive," announced Gaza's main telecoms firm,
Paltel.
       "We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by
Israeli forces," Seif Magango, spokesman for the United Nations Human Rights
Office, said in a statement.
       "It is particularly concerning that this latest intense bombardment comes
after Israeli forces ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move to
Middle Gaza and Tal al-Sultan in Rafah."
       Netanyahu, however, reiterated Israel would stay the course.
       "Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised and Palestinian
society must be deradicalised," he argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed
published late Monday.
       "These are the three prerequisites for peace", he wrote.
       On Tuesday Israel's army chief Herzi Halevi told a news conference that the
war "will continue for many more months", a point made earlier this month by
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who said "it will last more than several months".
       The bloodiest ever Gaza war erupted when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel and
killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on
Israeli figures.
       They took 250 hostages of whom 129 remain inside Gaza, Israel says.
       Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and a siege followed by a
ground invasion. The campaign has killed at least 20,915 people, mostly women
and children, according to the latest toll issued Tuesday by Gaza's health
ministry.
       
       - Watching a child die -
    
       
       The army says 158 Israeli soldiers have been killed inside Gaza.
       AFPTV images from Gaza City's devastated and largely deserted Tal al-Hawa
area showed dirt roads winding through mountains of rubble amid multi-storey
buildings pancaked by strikes or standing askew.
       "The destruction is very great, and all the owners of the place have been
displaced to the south," said one Palestinian man. "May God help people through
the misfortunes they are in."
       Some residents of Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza returned to the
ruins of their homes after strikes that Gaza's health ministry said killed at
least 70 people. AFP was unable to independently verify that toll.
       Sean Casey, a World Health Organization Emergency Medical Teams
coordinator, was part of a WHO mission to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in
central Gaza's Deir al-Balah city after the refugee camp strikes.
       In a video shot inside the hospital, Casey appeared to be fighting back
tears as he described a nine-year-old boy, Ahmed, "being treated basically with
sedation to ease his suffering as he dies", after receiving a head wound when a
building was struck.
       Only a minority of Gaza's hospitals are even partly functioning, says the
WHO, whose Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated his "call for
an immediate ceasefire".
       The Israeli army said it was "reviewing the incident" at Al-Maghazi and
added it is "committed to international law including taking feasible steps to
minimise harm to civilians".
       Israel has been under increasing pressure from its allies to protect
non-combatants.
       
       - US-Israeli consultations -
    
       
       Gaza's 2.4 million people are enduring dire shortages of water, food, fuel
and medicine, with only limited aid entering.
       An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN,
many having fled south.
       Netanyahu told members of his conservative Likud party on Monday that he
was ready to support the voluntary migration of civilians out of the Gaza
Strip, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
       He reportedly told party members "our problem is not whether to allow an
exit, but that there will be countries that are willing to absorb an exit".
       In a statement, Hamas rejected as "absurd" any such discussion. "There
can't be exile and there is no other choice than to remain on our land."
       United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the idea of
pushing Palestinians into Egypt "is a nonstarter".
       Blinken was meeting on Tuesday with Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs
Ron Dermer and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan "for face-to-face
consultations on a number of matters related to the conflict in Gaza and the
return of hostages held by Hamas", National Security Council spokesperson
Adrienne Watson said.
       The war has stoked regional tensions.
       Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said an Israeli air strike in
Syria killed the senior Quds Force commander Razi Moussavi. President Ebrahim
Raisi vowed Israel "will certainly pay for this crime".
       Explosions were heard and missiles sighted near a vessel transiting the Red
Sea off Yemen's port of Hodeida, which is controlled by Iran-backed rebels, the
Royal Navy's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said, reporting
the latest incident in the waterway vital for global trade.
       In Iraq, the US military launched strikes on pro-Iran groups it has blamed
for numerous attacks on US and allied forces since the Israel-Hamas war began.
The strike claimed at least one life, according to Iraqi authorities.
       An anti-tank missile fired by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement wounded nine
soldiers as they rescued a civilian injured in another cross-border strike,
Israel's military said.
       Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where two
Palestinians were killed on Tuesday.