Israeli forces thrust deeper into Rafah

JERUSALEM/GAZA — Israeli forces advanced deeper into the western part of Rafah, amid one of the worst nights of bombardment, as Israel and Hamas' difficult-to-reconcile positions cast doubt on the prospect of a truce deal.

Residents in Rafah said on Thursday that Israeli forces thrust toward the Al-Mawasi area of Rafah near the beach, which is designated as a humanitarian area in all announcements and maps published by the Israeli army since it began its Rafah offensive in May.

But the Israeli military denied in a statement it had launched any strikes inside the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone.

Israel said its assault aimed to wipe out Hamas' last intact combat units in Rafah, a city that had sheltered more than a million people before the latest advance began. Most of those people have now moved north toward Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said in a statement it was continuing "intelligence-based, targeted operations" in Rafah, saying forces in the past day had located weapons and killed Palestinian gunmen in close-range combat.

Over the past day, the military said it had struck 45 targets across the Gaza Strip from the air, including military structures, militant cells, rocket launchers and tunnel shafts.

Israel has ruled out peace until Hamas is eradicated.

Hamas welcomed a new US cease-fire proposal but made some amendments, reaffirming its stance that any agreement must secure an end to the conflict.

The changes that Hamas requested to the cease-fire proposal are "not significant" and include the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, a senior leader in the group told Reuters on Thursday.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday that Israel is standing behind the cease-fire proposal, and the goal is to bridge gaps with Hamas and get to a deal soon.

Efforts to secure an agreement are still continuing, according to mediators Qatar and Egypt.

Since a brief weeklong truce in November, repeated attempts to arrange a cease-fire have failed.

Hamas precipitated the conflict on Oct 7, killing about 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.

Staggering figure

Israel's bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 37,000 people since then, according to the territory's health ministry. Thousands more are feared dead buried under the rubble, with most of the 2.3 million population displaced.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said on Thursday that a staggering total of 120 million people are living forcibly displaced by war, violence and persecution, branding the ever-increasing number a "terrible indictment on the state of the world".

The UN's refugee agency said forced displacement across the globe had risen for a 12th consecutive year to a record high, with conflicts in places like Gaza forcing even more people to flee their homes.

In the aftermath of campus turmoil over pro-Palestinian protests in the United States, the president of the University of Miami was chosen on Wednesday to become the next chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, where the retiring incumbent leaves a campus roiled by protests over the Gaza conflict.

Julio Frenk, a global public health researcher, was selected by regents of the University of California system at a meeting on the UCLA campus, where there was a swarm of security officers.

Frenk will succeed Gene Block, who has been chancellor for 17 years and announced his planned retirement long before UCLA became a national flashpoint for US campus protests. This spring, pro-Palestinian encampments were built and cleared by police with many arrests.

More than 200 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested on May 2 as police moved to dismantle an encampment at the university. On May 23, a group of protesters briefly established a second encampment on the UCLA campus before police moved in to disband the efforts.

As the conflict in Gaza triggers wider tensions, hundreds of rockets were fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel on Wednesday, hours after Israeli airstrikes killed a Hezbollah militant commander.

The Israeli military said about 215 projectiles were detected, some of which were intercepted, and that several fires were caused by the strikes.

Agencies - Xinhua