GAZA: The Zionist entity kept up its air strikes on Gaza Wednesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ramp up the pressure on Hamas as hopes faded for a US-announced ceasefire plan. Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh accused the Zionist entity of deliberately undermining negotiations for a truce and hostage release deal because it did not want to end the war. The Zionist military said it had carried out 25 strikes in 24 hours.

The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said 52 people, most of them women and children, had been killed in Zionist strikes over the previous 24 hours. The UN humanitarian office OCHA said multiple strikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed and wounded dozens. The territory’s civil defense agency said 30 people had been killed in three strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza — one on a UN-run school, another on a house and a third on a mosque.

In southern Gaza, two people were killed in Zionist bombardment of the Shakush area, northwest of Rafah, a medical source at Nasser Hospital said. At least 90 percent of Gazans have been forced from their homes, many of them seeking refuge in UN-run schools. Seven of these schools have been hit by Zionist strikes since July 6. Nearly 70 percent of UN-run schools across Gaza have been hit during more than nine months of fighting, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday.

In a telephone call with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan late Tuesday, the Hamas leader blamed the Zionist entity for the deadlock. “We dealt positively with the proposals put to us by the mediators but the occupation is avoiding the required outcome and does not want to reach an agreement under which it ends its war,” Haniyeh said.

The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 38,794 people, mostly women and children, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry. At a press conference on Wednesday, the World Health Organization’s representative in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Rik Peeperkorn, said that only 16 aid trucks had entered the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom border crossing during the last month, while dozens of trucks were still waiting to do so. The WHO also said that out of the territory’s 36 hospitals, only 15 were partially functioning and that there had been more than a thousand attacks against health facilities in Gaza since October.

The Zionist entity’s policy toward the West Bank is dooming any prospect of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday. Violence and arrests have soared in the Zionist-occupied territory since the Gaza war erupted. Through administrative and legal steps, the Zionist entity is changing the geography

of the West Bank, Guterres said in a statement read by his chief of staff, Courtenay Rattray, during a meeting of the Security Council.

Settlement expansion is expected to speed up due to big land seizures in strategic areas and changes to planning, land management and governance, Guterres added. “Recent developments are driving a stake through the heart of any prospect for a two-state solution,” said the UN chief. He said the Zionist entity is taking steps to extend sovereignty over the West Bank.

Guterres said the Zionist entity has taken punitive steps against the Palestinian Authority and legalized five Zionist outposts in the West Bank. “We must change course. All settlement activity must cease immediately,” Guterres said. He said Zionist settlements are a flagrant violation of international law and an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Wednesday that his Iran-backed group would hit new targets in the Zionist entity if more civilians are killed in Zionist strikes on Lebanon. “If the enemy continues to target civilians as it has done in recent days, then this will push us to target localities that we have not targeted until now,” Nasrallah said.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Zionist strikes in the south killed five people, including three Syrian children, on Tuesday. In response, Hezbollah said it launched rounds of Katyusha rockets at the Zionist entity. The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, described as “horrific” the killing of the children, who were reportedly playing in front of their home at the time of the strike.

Nasrallah warned the Zionist entity of the consequences of any invasion of Lebanon, saying the Zionist entity would be left without any tanks if a full-blown conflict erupted. Nasrallah, speaking during Ashura commemorations, also pledged to assist thousands of Lebanese whose homes have been destroyed by cross-border fire. “We assure residents whose homes have been completely or partially demolished that we will work with you, hand in hand... we will rebuild our homes,” he said.

When Shaheen Jarkas fled Syria’s war for Lebanon, he hoped his family would be safe. Instead, the Zionist strike killed his two young children. “Like every day... the children were spending their day playing,” said Jarkas, 55, a farm worker originally from north Syria’s Afrin area but now living in the southern border village of Umm Toot. “I heard the sound of a strike” and ran towards it, he said. Jarkas said he found his children, Jan, 10, and Mohammed, seven, “drowning in blood”.

On Wednesday, the children’s bodies, wrapped in what appeared to be bed coverings, were laid out on stretchers as mourners gathered and a sheikh led funerary prayers. Another Syrian agricultural worker in Umm Toot, Mohammed Khalil, 58, said at first he didn’t know where exactly the strike had hit. “We ran to check on the children who had been playing,” he said, his face gaunt and his hair grey. “We found them dead,” with his 12-year-old son Khalil Khalil among them, he said.

Around him in Qasimiya in the Tyre district, where the bodies were taken for funerals, people wept, women screamed in grief, and some embraced and consoled each other. “We came as refugees from (Syria) in order to protect our children,” he said. “The (Zionist) government is responsible” for their killing, he added. – Agencies