Israel continued with its bombardment of the besieged southern Gaza Strip on Thursday while it was being hauled before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over breaches of the United Nations Genocide convention.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Egypt on the final leg of regional talks aimed at preventing the Israel-Hamas war from spreading.
In Cairo, Blinken was to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose country is a mediator in the Gaza war now in its fourth month.
Blinken’s nine-country Middle East trip is concluding after Wednesday’s UN Security Council resolution that demanded Iran backed Yemeni rebels “immediately cease” attacks which have disrupted shipping in the Red Sea.
In Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt and overrun with displaced people fleeing fighting further north, Palestinians expressed hope the ICJ could render justice on their behalf.
“Israel considers itself above the law. We ask from the international judges to judge Israel, and its government,” said Hisham al-Kullah.
Another Rafah resident, Mohammad al-Arjan, expressed hope that “the court stops the war”.
However, Blinken dismissed South Africa’s case against the US’s ally, Israel, as “meritless” and Israel’s president called it “atrocious and preposterous”.
At least 23 357 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Palestine, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Hamas’s press office on Thursday said that 62 people had been killed in strikes overnight, including around Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said an Israeli strike on an ambulance in central Gaza killed four medics and two other passengers on Wednesday.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the incident when contacted by AFP.
The war has triggered an acute humanitarian crisis, with an Israeli siege sparking acute shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said there were “nearly insurmountable challenges” to aid delivery in Gaza.
“Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need,” he told reporters.
The WHO says only a few Gaza hospitals are even partly functioning.
The UN estimates 1.9 million Gazans have been uprooted by the war.
AFP