A woman stands holding a child surrounded by the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis on the southern Gaza Strip yesterday
Eight Palestinians were killed yesterday in an Israeli airstrike on a training college near Gaza City being used to distribute aid, Palestinian witnesses said, as Israeli tanks pushed further into the southern city of Rafah.
The strike hit part of a vocational college run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA that is now providing aid to displaced families.
A Reuters photographer saw a low-rise building completely demolished and bodies wrapped in blankets laid out beside the road, waiting to be taken away.
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas denies Israeli accusations it uses civilians as human shields or uses civilian facilities for military purposes.
Juliette Touma, UNRWA's Director of Communications, said: "Since the beginning of the war, we have recorded that nearly 190 of our buildings have been hit. This is the vast majority of our buildings in Gaza." A total of 193 UNRWA team members have been killed in the conflict, she added.
More than eight months into Israel's war in the Hamas-administered Palestinian enclave, its advance is focused on the two areas its forces have yet to seize — Rafah on Gaza's southern tip and the area surrounding Deir al-Balah in the centre.
Residents said Israeli tanks had advanced to the edge of the Mawasi displaced persons' camp in the northwest of Rafah.
Another strike killed two people in Nuseirat in central Gaza.
In Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, health officials at Kamal Adwan Hospital said two babies had died of malnutrition.
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'Intense fighting in
Rafah about to end'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that the Israeli military's heavy fighting against Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah is nearly over.
"The intense phase of the fighting against Hamas is about to end," he said in an interview with Channel 14.
"It doesn't mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah," he said.
"After the end of the intense phase, we will be able to redeploy some forces to the north, and we will do that. Primarily for defensive purposes but also to bring the (displaced) residents back home," Netanyahu said in his first interview with an Israeli network since the start of the war on October 7.
Netanyahu said he would not agree to any deal that stipulates an end to the war in Gaza, indicating that he was open to a "partial" deal that would facilitate the return of some hostages still held in Gaza, if not all.
