Rafah massacre: Biden pushing for six-week Gaza fighting halt after deadly Rafah strikes – live

Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinian gunmen in fighting in the southern and central Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, the military said on Tuesday.

It said more than 30 gunmen were killed in Khan Younis, a southern city close to Rafah on Gaza’s Egyptian border, where Israeli leaders have said they plan to operate next in a bid to destroy remaining Hamas battalions.

China has urged Israel to stop its military offensive in Gaza’s Rafah city “as soon as possible” after Benjamin Netanyahu’s forces killed at least 67 people in an attack on Monday.

“China… opposes and condemns actions that harm civilians and violate international law,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

China asked Israel to “stop its military operation as soon as possible, make every effort to avoid innocent civilian casualties… to prevent a more serious humanitarian disaster in the Rafah area.”

More than 12,300 Palestinian minors and 8,400 women have been killed so far in Israel’s relentless offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Minors made up about 43 per cent of the total number of 28,340 Palestinians killed so far. Women and minors together make up 73 per cent of those killed in the war, according to the ministry’s figures.

The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 10,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence. It blames Hamas for the death toll, saying it embeds in civilian areas.

In its report, the Gaza ministry told the Associated Press that more than 7,000 people are missing and presumed dead. It said 67,984 people have been wounded in the war.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has called on president Joe Biden to stop providing weapons to Israel instead of simply demanding that the two sides in the war in Gaza stop killing civilians.

“If you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms to prevent so many people being killed,” Mr Borrell told reporters in Brussels.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians in the territory, displaced over 80 per cent of the population and set off a massive humanitarian crisis.

Mr Borrell said that it’s not good enough for countries to just send their delegations to Tel Aviv and beg Israel not to kill so many civilians, saying: “How many is too many? Which is the standard? (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu doesn’t listen to anyone.”

In an impassioned plea, the EU’s top diplomat also expressed concern about the likelihood of an imminent Israeli ground assault on Rafah following Monday’s airstrikes that killed 67 Palestinians.

“They are going to evacuate. Where, to the moon? Where are they going to evacuate these people?” he asked.

The Israeli military on Tuesday announced that two officers, including a battalion commander, and one soldier were killed during fighting in the Gaza Strip.

All three men – aged 36, 30 and 27 – were from the 630th Reserve Battalion of the Southern Brigade.

Meanwhile, the armed wing of the Hamas militants on Monday said that three of the eight Israeli hostages who sustained injuries following Israeli airstrikes had died from their wounds.

“We will postpone the announcement of the names and pictures of the dead for the coming days until the fate of the remaining wounded becomes clear,” the Al Qassam Brigades said in a statement.

Protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza gathered outside 10 Downing Street on Monday after Rafah was hit by airstrikes overnight.

Two Israeli hostages were rescued from the town on the border with Egypt overnight following a raid on a heavily guarded apartment which killed at least 67 people, according to a spokesperson for the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Joe Biden said on Monday the US is pushing for a six-week pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as a stepping stone toward a longer ceasefire.

Mr Biden and Jordan’s King Abdullah spoke after the two longtime allies held talks in the White House residence. Their discussions covered a daunting list of challenges, including a looming Israeli ground offensive in southern Gaza and the threat of a humanitarian calamity among Palestinian civilians.

Israel on Monday launched airstrikes in the Rafah refugee camp, killing at least 67 Palestinians, despite a warning from Mr Biden to hold fire.

Mr Biden, who has shown increasing exasperation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not heeding his advice, said the US was working with allies in the region on a deal to pause the fighting.

The deal would start with a pause in fighting of at least six weeks, “which we could then take the time to build something more enduring,” he said.

The Kremlin hopes that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will visit Russia at a time convenient for both sides, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported on Tuesday.

“Abbas has an open invitation. We hope that the visit will take place at a time convenient for both sides,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying.

RIA said that Mr Abbas had planned to come to Russia in November of last year, but the visit was postponed at the request of the Palestinian side.

In al-Najjar hospital in Gaza’s border city of Rafah, the shredded remains of body parts arrived in bags with numbers scribbled on the top.

Written by the first responders who had just pulled the limbs out of the rubble, the numbers signified the estimated number of people that they thought might be inside each bag.

The mangled pieces of human flesh are so damaged “it was impossible to properly identify them”, said Amjed*, a resident of the city who visited the hospital on Monday.

He shuttled from hospital to hospital, from bomb site to bomb site, trying to sort the missing from the dead in the wake of Israel’s ferocious overnight assault on the city.

“The first bodies to arrive at the hospitals were all children and women. There were so many bodies lining the ground,” he told The Independent.