CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) - Israel faced pressure from the visiting US defence chief and censure from a global rights group on Monday over the intensity of its war with Hamas in Gaza due to spiralling civilian deaths and hunger among Palestinians.
With no let-up in the more than two-month-old bombardment and siege of the densely populated enclave, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was the latest US official to head to Israel to press for a transition away from high-intensity warfare.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to achieve total victory over Gaza's ruling Hamas militants, who killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages in a surprise Oct. 7 raid into Israel, according to Israeli tallies.
The war has left the Gaza Strip largely in ruins and killed about 19,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities. Food is running scarce for the territory's 2.3 million people, basic services have collapsed, and most people are homeless.
In its report, HRW accused Israeli forces of deliberately blocking delivery of water, food and fuel, razing agricultural areas and depriving people of items needed for survival.
"The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip," HRW, a global group based in New York, said in a report. "World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime."
Israel responded by calling HRW an "antisemitic and anti-Israeli" group with no moral right to criticise after its "silent" reaction to Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage.
"All their agenda is anti-Israel and they deserve no response," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat.
Israel has often denied targeting civilians while saying Hamas is to blame for high casualties by embedding itself in residential areas. It says it warns civilians of pending strikes wherever possible and tries to facilitate aid to innocents while blocking thousands of Hamas fighters operating from tunnels.
"We placed zero restrictions on the amount of food and water that are being allowed into the Gaza Strip," Israeli government spokesperson Tal Heinrich said, adding that 201 trucks of humanitarian aid had entered Gaza on Sunday.
He said Israel's ability to inspect supplies was bigger than the UN and charities' capacity to send them.
DEATHS MOUNT
In the latest bombardments, 90 Palestinians died in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Sunday, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. Hamas Aqsa radio reported an attack on Gaza's main hospital, Al Shifa.
In Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, medics said 12 Palestinians had been killed and dozens wounded, while in Rafah in the south, an Israeli air strike on a house left at least four people dead.
An Israeli tank shell hit the maternity building inside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing a 13-year-old girl who had lost a leg in a previous hit, the Gaza health ministry said.
On the Israeli side, the military released the names of four more soldiers killed in combat in Gaza, making it 126 dead in the strip since its ground invasion began in late October.