Israel sets Ramadan deadline for Rafah

GAZA/JERUSALEM — Israel has threatened to launch an offensive in Gaza's Rafah by the start of Ramadan if Hamas does not return the remaining hostages by then, despite international pressure to protect Palestinian civilians sheltering in the city.

With prospects for truce talks dimming, the United Nations and other governments, including Israel's key ally, the United States, have issued urgent appeals to Israel to call off its planned offensive on Rafah.

The Israeli government says the city on the Egypt border is the last remaining stronghold in Gaza of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

It is also where three-quarters of the displaced Palestinian population has fled, taking shelter in sprawling tent encampments without access to adequate food, water or medicine.

International pressure has grown on Israel to halt the offensive in the besieged coastal territory, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again on Sunday vowed "total victory" over Hamas.

War cabinet member Benny Gantz warned on Sunday that the Israeli army is ready to push deeper into Rafah during Ramadan.

"The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know: if by Ramadan the hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, including the Rafah area," said Gantz, a former military chief of staff.

Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, is expected to begin around March 10.

But where Palestinians can go after months of conflict have flattened vast swathes of the strip remains unclear.

"There's no safe place. Even the hospital is not safe," Ahmad Mohammed Aburizq told Agence France-Presse from a Rafah hospital.

For weeks, international mediators have sought to broker a truce-for-hostages deal that would pause fighting for six weeks.

The international community overwhelmingly supports an independent Palestinian state as part of a future peace agreement, but Israel's government on Sunday adopted a declaration rejecting such recognition.

Hamas has said it will suspend its involvement in any cease-fire negotiations unless relief supplies reach Gaza's north, where aid agencies have warned of looming famine.

The UN's top court is expected to open a week of hearings from Monday examining the legal consequences of Israel's 57-year occupation of Palestinian territories.

Aid trucks blocked

On Sunday morning, dozens of Israelis blocked Gaza-bound aid trucks from entering through the Nitzana border crossing with Egypt, AFP reporters and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.

Overnight strikes and battles in Gaza killed more than 100 Palestinians, pushing the death toll past 29,000, said the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, with fighting heaviest in Khan Younis, north of Rafah.

The conflict began after Hamas launched a surprise attack in Israel on Oct 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.

Gazans say they are going so hungry they are grinding animal feed into flour. "My children are starving, they wake up crying from hunger. Where do I get food for them?" a Gazan woman told AFP.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said nearly 3 in 4 people are drinking contaminated water.

"The speed of deterioration in Gaza is unprecedented," it said.

After a weeklong siege, the largest hospital still functional in Gaza is no longer operational, according to the World Health Organization.

At least 20 of the 200 patients still at the Nasser Hospital require relocation to other facilities, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that his organization "was not permitted to enter" the site.

Seven patients, including a child, have died there since Friday due to power cuts, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht said diesel and oxygen supplies had been delivered on Saturday and a temporary generator was running.

Agencies via Xinhua