GAZA: The Zionist entity pummeled southern Gaza on Tuesday, after announcing the winding down of the intense phase of the war that has inflamed tensions across the Middle East. Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has come under mounting international pressure to end its offensive in Gaza.

But fears are mounting the war could escalate, with Iran and its proxies stepping up attacks across the region in solidarity with Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Palestinian territory. Hamas’ press office said Zionist strikes killed at least 78 people in the Gaza Strip overnight. An AFP correspondent said the southern city of Khan Yunis was hit hard.

A young girl scoured rubble for salvageable items, while some scrambled to reach safer areas in Rafah on the Egyptian border, their belongings piled onto carts drawn by donkeys and tractors. In central Gaza’s devastated Al-Maghazi refugee camp, one woman raised her hands and cried out amid the wreckage of warped metal, gutted buildings and overturned vehicles.

A barrage of 50 rockets was fired toward Netivot in the Zionist entity, without causing any casualties, the army said. Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, claimed the attack. AFPTV live footage showed trails of smoke and explosions ring out as Zionist air defenses intercepted rockets near Gaza.

At least 24,285 Palestinians, about 70 percent of them women, children and adolescents, have been killed in Gaza in Zionist bombardments and ground operations since Oct 7. The Zionist entity has concentrated operations on Khan Yunis since claiming on Jan 6 that it had dismantled Hamas’ military structures in the north. Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said intense operations would “soon” wind down in the territory’s south. The army announced Tuesday the death of two more soldiers in Gaza, bringing to 190 the total number killed since its ground invasion began.

UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday reiterated calls to stop the facilitate delivering aid, releasing the hostages and “tamp down the flames of wider war”. But Zionist officials have repeatedly warned the fighting will continue for months. Violence involving regional allies of Iran-backed Hamas has surged since the war began.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who say their repeated attacks on Red Sea shipping are in solidarity with Gaza, claimed a missile strike on a US-owned cargo ship on Monday. It came just days after the United States and Britain bombed scores of targets inside Houthi-controlled Yemen in response to their operations. In another such attack, a missile struck a Greek-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea off Yemen, maritime risk management company Ambrey said on Tuesday.

The US military said it had seized Iranian-made missile parts that were en route to the Houthis on a boat in the Arabian Sea. On Tuesday, the Zionist army said it conducted air and artillery strikes on Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed movement that has exchanged regular cross-border fire with Zionist forces since the war started.

The UN says the Zionist-Hamas war has displaced roughly 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people, many of whom have been forced to crowd into shelters and struggle to get food, water, fuel and medical care. As temperatures plunge, families living in makeshift tents in the southern city of Rafah have resorted to burning plastic to ward off the chill, despite the noxious fumes. “I pray every day that we will all be martyred. Death is better than this life,” said Abdul Karim Muhammad, a 29-year-old father of three whose family fled to Rafah from Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The Zionist public has kept up pressure on the government to secure the return of the captives seized by Hamas, which on Monday announced the deaths of two more captives. The Al-Qassam Brigades released a video showing a woman hostage revealing that two men she was held with had been killed in captivity. It blamed Zionist bombing for their deaths. – AFP