Israel pounds Gaza as fears grow of widening war
World
Israel pummelled southern Gaza on Tuesday (Jan 16), killing dozens.
GAZA (AFP) - Israel pummelled southern Gaza on Tuesday (Jan 16), killing dozens, even as authorities announced the winding down of the intense phase of the war that has inflamed tensions across the Middle East.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under mounting international pressure to end its offensive in Gaza launched in response to Hamas's unprecedented Oct 7 attacks.
But fears are mounting that the war could be widening, with Iran and its proxies stepping up attacks across the region in solidarity with Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Palestinian territory.
Overnight, a wave of Israeli strikes killed at least 78 people in the Gaza Strip, Hamas' press office said. An AFP correspondent said the southern city of Khan Yunis was hit hard.
On Tuesday morning, a barrage of 50 rockets was fired at southern Israel, near Netivot, without causing any casualties, the Israeli army said.
Fighting has ravaged Gaza since Oct 7, when Hamas militants carried out an unparalleled attack on Israel that resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages and dragged them back to Gaza, 132 of whom Israel says are still in the coastal territory, including at least 25 believed to have been killed.
More than 24,000 Palestinians, around 70 per cent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in Gaza in Israeli bombardments and ground operations since Oct 7, according to the Hamas government's health ministry.
"TAMP DOWN FLAMES"
AFPTV live footage showed trails of smoke and explosions ringing out as Israel's air defences intercepted rockets near the Gaza border.
Khan Yunis has been the focus of Israeli military operations since the army said on Jan 6 that it had dismantled Hamas's military structures in the north and was shifting its focus to the south.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had told a news conference on Monday that intense operations would soon be winding down in south Gaza.
"In southern Gaza we will reach this achievement and it will end soon, and in both places, the moment will come when we will move to the next phase," he said, without specifying a time frame.
The health ministry said on Tuesday that the war had claimed the lives of at least 24,285 people in the Palestinian territory.
The Israeli army also announced on early Tuesday the death of one more soldier in Gaza, bringing the total number killed since its ground invasion began to 189.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday reiterated calls for a stop to the fighting.
"We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to ensure sufficient aid gets to where it is needed, to facilitate the release of the hostages, to tamp down the flames of wider war - because the longer the conflict in Gaza continues, the greater the risk of escalation and miscalculation," he said.
IRAN MISSILE STRIKES
Israeli officials, including Netanyahu over the weekend, have repeatedly warned the fighting in Gaza will go on for months.
Violence involving regional allies of Iran-backed Hamas - considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union - has surged since the war began.
Yemen's Houthi rebels, who say they act in solidarity with Gaza, claimed a missile strike on a US-owned cargo ship on Monday, just days after the United States and Britain bombed scores of targets inside the country in response to repeated attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
Overnight, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it carried out a missile attack that destroyed "the Zionist regime's (Israel) spy headquarters in the Kurdistan region of Iraq".
The IRGC said it also struck a "gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups" in Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and hit a number of Islamic State group targets in Syria.
Iraq condemned the strikes as "attack on its sovereignty" and said authorities "will take all legal steps", including "lodging a complaint with the (UN) Security Council", the foreign ministry said.
It also summoned Iran's envoy in Baghdad and recalled its ambassador from Tehran for consultations. Iran defended the strikes, saying they were a "targeted operation" and "just punishment" against those who breach the Islamic republic's security.
