GAZA: The Zionist war in Gaza entered its 200th day on Tuesday with fears mounting of a Zionist invasion in the overcrowded south of the besieged Gaza Strip. The Zionist army carried out intense shelling overnight of Gaza City, AFP correspondents and witnesses said, with the military saying it also struck Hamas positions in south Gaza.

Shelling and loud explosions were heard in southwest Gaza and the city of Khan Yunis in the south, while air strikes struck near the Bureij refugee camp and artillery fire hit the Nuseirat refugee camp. The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 34,183 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the territory.

As diplomacy aimed at ending the war stalls, key mediator Qatar said Hamas’ political leadership would stay in Doha “as long as their presence here... is useful and positive in this mediation effort”, according to foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari. The Gulf state, which has hosted Hamas leaders since 2012, said last week it was reassessing its mediation role, fueling speculation that the Palestinian group could be asked to leave.

Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said Tuesday that health workers had uncovered nearly 340 bodies, updating an earlier figure, of Palestinians killed and buried by Zionist forces at the Nasser Hospital complex. The United Nations rights office said it was “horrified” by the destruction at Nasser and Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, the territory’s two largest medical facilities, which were both previously raided by Zionist forces.

Demanding an “independent” probe, UN rights chief Volker Turk noted the “special protection” awarded to hospitals under international law. “The intentional killing of civilians, detainees and others who are hors de combat is a war crime,” he said. Global opposition has mounted over the civilian toll of the Zionist entity’s Gaza offensive which has turned vast areas into rubble and sparked fears of famine.

The United Nations says “multiple obstacles” continue to impede delivery of urgently needed aid for Gazans desperate for food, water, shelter and medicine. But Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press on with a planned offensive on Rafah, the town on the border with Egypt where most of Gaza’s 2.4 million population has sheltered.

Citing Egyptian officials briefed on the Zionist plans, the Wall Street Journal said the Zionist entity was planning to move civilians from Rafah to nearby Khan Yunis. The operation would last two to three weeks and be done in coordination with the United States, Egypt and other Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates, the Journal reported. The Zionist entity would then send troops into Rafah gradually, targeting areas where Hamas’s leaders are thought to be hiding, in a military operation that would last six weeks, it added.

Foreign ministers of the G7 group of developed economies have said they oppose a “full-scale military operation in Rafah” because of the “catastrophic consequences” for civilians, fears shared by many aid groups. With Rafah also being the main entry point for humanitarian relief into Gaza, a Zionist invasion there “means cutting the aid system off from its lifeline”, said Ahmed Bayram, media adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Middle East.

The war has triggered violence across the region, including near-daily cross-border exchanges between the Zionist army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a Hamas ally. The Iran-backed Lebanese group said it launched drone attacks on two northern Zionist army bases on Tuesday, in retaliation for a strike deep into Lebanon that killed a Hezbollah fighter the Zionist entity described as “significant”.

Hezbollah announced “a combined air attack using decoy and explosive drones”, though the Zionist entity said it had “successfully intercepted” the strike. Local rescuers and official media later said a Zionist strike killed a woman and a girl from the same family on Tuesday in Lebanon’s south. A civil defense source told AFP that “a woman in her 50s and a 12-year-old girl have been killed” in a Zionist strike while several injured people from the same family were taken to hospital. – AFP