GAZA: The Zionist entity pressed its blistering assault in the Gaza Strip on Saturday as fears grew over a push into Rafah, the southern city teeming with civilians uprooted by the nearly four-month war. A barrage of air strikes and tank fire rocked Khan Yunis overnight and through the day, an AFP journalist said of the main city in southern Gaza that has been the focus of the Zionist entity’s offensive.

The health ministry in Gaza said more than 100 people were killed across the Palestinian territory overnight, mostly women and children. Hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s 2.4 million people displaced by the fierce fighting have fled south to Rafah since the outbreak of the war, with their tents crammed along streets and in parks.

The city that had been home to 200,000 people now hosts more than half of Gaza’s population, the United Nations said. Civilians who fled to Rafah have been pushed up against the border with Egypt, trying to avoid parts of the city exposed to the fighting in nearby Khan Yunis. AFPTV images showed Palestinians gathered around a row of body bags at the Najjar hospital in Rafah after Zionist strikes.

“The children were just sleeping and suddenly the bombardment happened. God took one of my children and three escaped death,” said Ahmad Bassam Al-Jamal, who also lost his father. Hamas remained defiant, with an official from the Palestinian Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 saying it was “holding its ground” in Khan Yunis. “The resistance is still steadfast in Khan Yunis... it is inflicting losses on the occupation,” said Mahmud Mardawi. “The enemy will not achieve anything by targeting Khan Yunis.”

The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said it was deeply concerned about the escalation of hostilities in Khan Yunis, which has pushed more and more people south. “Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next,” said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke.

The Zionist entity’s massive military offensive has killed at least 27,238 people in Gaza, mostly women and children. The Zionist entity has lost 224 soldiers since starting its Gaza ground operations in late October, according to the army. The fighting has devastated the narrow coastal strip, while a Zionist siege has resulted in dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines.

Image analysis released Friday by the UN satellite center UNITAR based on footage collected on Jan 6 and 7 showed “approximately 30 percent” of Gaza’s structures had been affected by the war. The soaring civilian death toll in Gaza, as well as fears among Zionists over the fate of captives, have fueled calls for a ceasefire.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East yet again in the coming days to press a new proposal involving the release of Zionist captives in return for a pause in the fighting, the State Department said. Blinken will visit Qatar and Egypt — the mediators of the proposal — as well as the Zionist entity, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia starting Sunday, it added. The trip — his fifth since the war broke out — comes after Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said there were hopes of “good news” about a fresh pause to the fighting “in the next couple of weeks”.

Ansari said a truce proposal thrashed out in Paris had “been approved by the (Zionist) side” and received a “positive” initial response from Hamas as well. But a source close to Hamas told AFP: “There is no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet — the factions have important observations — and the Qatari statement is rushed and not true.”

A Hamas source said it had been presented with a plan involving an initial six-week pause in fighting that would see more aid delivered into Gaza and exchanges of certain Zionist captives for Palestinian prisoners held in the Zionist entity. The leaders of Hamas and its Gaza ally Islamic Jihad, Qatar-based Ismail Haniyeh and Ziyad Al-Nakhalah, respectively, discussed the latest development and said any future ceasefire must lead to “a full withdrawal” of Zionist troops from Gaza, Haniyeh’s office said. – AFP