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Israel carried out an intense airstrike on the Gaza Strip hours after US President Joe Biden publicly supported international calls for a ceasefire between the Jewish state and Hamas, the militant group. Palestinian.
Sixty Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of airstrikes against what the military described as a network of tunnels, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the armed forces to “continue to attack.”
Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, retaliated with a volley of rockets in Israeli cities after six hours calm overnight. Witnesses reported that two buildings were targeted on Tuesday in Gaza City, the heavily populated urban center of the blocked territory, as fighting broke out in a second week.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israeli strikes had killed 212 Palestinians, including 61 children and 36 women.
Israeli army officials said 130 of the dead were Hamas fighters and discussed Gazan estimates that more than half of the dead were women and children. Israel has reported ten deaths from Hamas attacks, including two children.
Biden spoke with Netanyahu as US president faces rising US criticism progressives, included within his own Democratic party, which wants the administration to put more pressure to stop hostilities.
“The president expressed his support for the ceasefire and discussed the U.S. commitment to Egypt and other partners to that end,” according to a reading of the White House call. Biden also “encouraged Israel to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians.”
The USA locked a UN Security Council statement calling for de-escalation, cessation of violence and respect for international law, according to two UN diplomats. The decision was the third time Washington has thwarted a softer statement or action since the violence began.
The UN, Egypt and Qatar have it could not be brokered a brief ceasefire to allow the sending of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave, controlled by Hamas since 2007.
Aviv Kochavi, head of the Israeli army, warned residents of communities adjacent to the territory that hostilities would continue as long as the country believed it was necessary.
“Hamas was surprised by our strength, method and achievements,” he said, referring to a military strategy, whereby Israel has carried out more airstrikes at a faster pace than in previous conflicts with Palestinian militants.
Israel has done it has been convicted to head to a building in Gaza that hosted international media over the weekend. Officials claimed that Hamas, which the United States has designated a foreign terrorist organization, operated from the same building.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had asked for details to justify the decision to attack the building after the attack, but that he himself had not seen any evidence.
Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator under Democratic and Republican administrations, said reading the call between Israeli and American leaders indicated that Biden was trying to end the crisis.
“It’s a subtle way of [Biden] making the point, “Okay, you’ve done what needed to be done. Now it’s time to find a way out of that,” he said.
Separately, several rockets fired at Israel from Lebanon on Monday, according to UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force on the Lebanon-Israel border. Lebanese state media reported that Israel retaliated with more than two dozen rockets. No casualties were reported in either incident.
The incident is the second rocket attack from Lebanon, hosting thousands of Palestinian refugees, since recent hostilities between Israel and Hamas began. No damage was caused to Israel.
Officials at Hezbollah, the Iran-backed paramilitary group in Lebanon that waged a month-long war with Israel in 2006, have given strong support to Palestinian militants. But the group has not indicated its intention to escalate the latest conflict.
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