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350 killed as Israel pounds south Gaza

UN says 85pc of the Palestinian enclave’s population now displaced
AGENCIES
Israel yesterday attacked the Gaza Strip’s biggest cities killing 350 Palestinians and forcing tens of thousands to flee to rapidly shrinking areas of refuge.
Gazans crammed into Rafah on the southern border with Egypt, heeding Israeli leaflets and messages saying that they would be safe in the city after successive warnings to head south.
But more than 20 people were killed in apartments there late on Wednesday sheltering displaced civilians from the north, said Eyad al-Hobi, a relative of some of those killed.
“All apartments in the building suffered serious damage,” he said as people brought out two apparently lifeless children.
Another relative, Bassam al-Hobi, said the building had been hit by three rockets.
“They targeted women and children, as you can see, and the guests who were told the south would be safe,” he said, gesturing to bodies wrapped in white cloth, some small, lined up on the ground and surrounded by mourners.
In southern Gaza’s largest city, Khan Younis, residents reported several Israeli air strikes and non-stop tank fire in the city’s east.
In Washington, a senior State Department official said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israel’s strategic affairs minister yesterday and told him Israel needs to do more to protect civilians in its offensive in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths yesterday said there were promising signs that the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel could soon be opened to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
A guided-missile attack from Lebanon killed a 60-year-old farmer in northern Israel yesterday, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Beirut would be turned “into Gaza” if Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, started an all-out war.
Israeli troops reached the heart of Khan Younis on Wednesday in a new phase of the war, now entering its third month. Health officials said three people were killed there yesterday.
Ambulances and relatives rushed the wounded into the city’s Nasser hospital, but even the floor space inside was full. Two badly wounded children lay on a trolley and a bloodstained young boy lay screaming among the patients on the floor.
“The injuries are very severe,” said doctor Mohamed Matar. “The situation is catastrophic in all senses of the word...We can’t treat the injured in this state.”
In northern Gaza, Qatar-based Al Jazeera said an Israeli bombardment of Jabalia Camp yesterday killed 22 relatives of its Gaza correspondent Moamen Al-Sharafi.
In the past 24 hours alone, 350 people had been killed, Gaza’s health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned he expects “public order to completely break down soon due to the desperate conditions” in Gaza, with “potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole”.
The Gaza health ministry said 17,177 Palestinians had been killed and 46,000 wounded since Oct 7, when Israel began bombing Gaza.
The UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) said 1.9 million people - 85 percent of Gaza’s population - had been displaced and its shelters were four times over capacity.