GAZA: Palestinians on Thursday mourned people killed in Zionist bombardment of Rafah, the crowded southern Gaza city where says it is advancing plans for a ground invasion. Global concern has mounted over the looming operation against Hamas militants in Rafah, where much of Gaza’s population has sought refuge from more than six months of war in the narrow coastal strip.

Aid groups warn any invasion would add to already-catastrophic conditions for Gaza’s 2.4 million people. Zionist officials have for more than two months vowed to enter Rafah, near the Egyptian border, but even before any ground operation the area has been regularly bombed, including overnight Wednesday-Thursday.

At the city’s Al-Najjar Hospital on Thursday, among the mourners were two men crouching, grief-stricken, in front of a white body bag. Those killed in a Zionist strike on Rafah included Abdallah Nabhan, 33, who worked for Belgium’s Enabel development agency. Brussels said it would summon the Zionist entity’s ambassador to explain the death.

The Zionist government spokesman David Mencer said the Zionist entity’s war cabinet was meeting Thursday “to discuss how to destroy the last battalions of Hamas”. He has said the four battalions that remain in Rafah “will be attacked”. The Zionist entity’s offensive has killed at least 34,305 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry. Thursday’s toll included at least 43 more deaths over the previous day.

As protests in solidarity with Palestinians spread on US campuses, President Joe Biden signed a law authorizing $13 billion in additional military aid for close ally the Zionist entity. The legislation also included $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza, plus billions more for other hard-hit areas of the world. “With famine now a real and dangerous threat” in Gaza and elsewhere, Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, on Thursday welcomed the additional US aid support.

The Gaza war has led to violence between the Zionist entity and Iran’s proxies and allies, driving up regional tensions. The Zionist entity has struck increasingly deeper into Lebanon, while the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement has stepped up rocket fire and drone attacks on Israeli military bases across the border. Hezbollah on Thursday denied a comment by Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that “half of Hezbollah’s commanders in southern Lebanon have been eliminated” in the months of violence.

In other regional fallout, US-led coalition forces shot down an anti-ship missile launched by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, American authorities said on Thursday. The Zionist military on Thursday said its aircraft had struck more than 30 Hamas targets across Gaza over the previous day. Witnesses reported clashes between militants and Zionist troops near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, as the world’s attention is increasingly focused further south, on Rafah.

Citing Egyptian officials briefed on Israeli plans, the Wall Street Journal has said the Zionist entity was planning to move civilians to nearby Khan Yunis over a period of two to three weeks, before gradually sending in troops. Between 80,000 and 100,000 Palestinians from Gaza have crossed into Egypt since the war started, the Palestinian ambassador to Cairo, Diab Allouh, told AFP.

On Thursday, Yamen Abu Suleiman, head of Gaza’s Civil Defense agency in Khan Yunis, raised to 392 the number of bodies he said had been recovered from three mass graves at the city’s Nasser Medical Complex. Families had identified 165 of them, he said, reiterating accusations that some are suspected of being killed and buried by Zionist forces. The White House, European Union and the UN rights office have called for transparent and independent probes into the body discoveries. – AFP