Israel strikes Gaza as US looks to block another UN cease-fire resolution

(AP) — Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 18 people overnight into Sunday, according to medics and witnesses, as the United States said it would veto another draft United Nations cease-fire resolution.

The US, Israel's top ally, instead hopes to broker a cease-fire agreement and hostage release between Israel and Hamas, and envisions a wider resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Hamas' demands “delusional” and rejected US and international calls for a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

His Cabinet adopted a declaration Sunday saying Israel “categorically rejects international edicts on a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians” and opposes any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, which it said would “grant a major prize to terror” after the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.

Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” over the Hamas militant group and to expand it to Gaza's southernmost town of Rafah, where more than half the enclave's population of 2.3 million Palestinians has sought refuge.

Netanyahu has pushed back against international concern about a Rafah offensive, saying residents will be evacuated to safer areas. Where they will go in largely devastated Gaza is not clear.

An airstrike in Rafah overnight killed six people, including a woman and three children, and another strike killed five men in Khan Younis, the main target of the offensive in southern Gaza in recent weeks. Associated Press journalists saw the bodies arrive at a hospital in Rafah.

“All those who were martyred were those whom the Jews asked to move to safe places,” said a bystander after the Rafah strike, Ahmad Abu Rezeq.

In Gaza City, which suffered widespread destruction in the initial weeks of the war, an airstrike flattened a home, killing seven people, including three women, according to Sayed al-Afifi, a relative.

Israel's military rarely comments on individual strikes and blames civilian casualties on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas.

In the occupied West Bank, a shootout erupted when Israeli forces went to arrest an armed suspect in the town of Tulkarem. The military said the suspect was killed, and a member of Israel's paramilitary Border Police was severely wounded. It described the target of the raid as a senior militant.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed.

The October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage. Militants still hold around 130 hostages, a fourth of them believed to be dead. Most of the others were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November.

The war has killed at least 28,985 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its records. On Sunday it said 127 bodies were brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours.

Around 80 per cent of Gaza's population have been driven from their homes, and a quarter face starvation.

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