Rafah

Sraeli airstrike on Rafah kills 12 Palestinians, Gaza croakers say

Summary

* rearmost DEVELOPMENTS

* Croakers say Israeli strike passed as they tried to recover body of mercenary in southern Gaza megacity

* Israel says there has been further fighting in central, northern and southern Gaza

* Head of UN agency for Palestinian deportees calls for end to what he calls Israeli attacks on staff and structures

JERUSALEM, May 30 (Reuters) - Israeli forces killed at least 12 Palestinians in an air strike in Rafah, southern Gaza, on Thursday, while fighting raged in several other the littoral enclave, Gaza croakers said.

Israel pressed on with its descent on Rafah a day after saying its forces had taken control of a buffer zone along the near border between the Gaza Strip and areas of Egypt. effective force along the Gaza border.

It said the buffer zone's prisoner had cut off a route used by the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas to smuggle arms into Gaza during further than seven months of war, which has laid waste to important of the home and raised fears of shortage.

Gaza medical sources said the 12 Palestinians, whom it said were civilians, had been killed and an unidentified number of others wounded in an Israeli airstrike as they tried to recover the body of a mercenary in the centre of Rafah.

Another Palestinian servicewoman was killed in an airstrike on Al- Shati exile camp west of Gaza City in the north of the densely peopled enclave, the croakers said.

Israel reported clashes in southern, central and northern Gaza but didn't incontinently note on the reported deaths in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians took retreat before in the war.

Israel has kept up raids on Rafah despite an order by the International Court of Justice( ICJ), the topU.N. court, to halt its attacks. Israeli forces say they're trying to bed out Hamas fighters and deliverance hostages being held there, and the ICJ also called for the release of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.

further than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and land war in Gaza, with 53 of those killed in the once 24 hours, the Hamas- run enclave's health ministry said.

Israel launched its descent after Hamas fighters crossed from Gaza into southern Israel onOct. 7 last time, killed 1,200 people and kidnapped further than 250, according to Israeli censuses.

The Israeli service said a dogface had been killed in fighting in northern Gaza, bringing to 292 Israel's combat losses since its first Gaza ground irruption onOct. 20.

Coverts, ARMS AND Snares

In an late call withU.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant underscored the continuing significance of Israeli operations in the Rafah area" due to concrete information regarding hostages held there".

" Minister Gallant detailed IDF conditioning in the Rafah area where 20 terror coverts have been linked," the Israeli Defence Ministry said in a statement on the late call.

The Israeli service also said in a statement that coverts used by Hamas for smuggling and moving fighters underground had been discovered during the rearmost raids, as well as large quantities of arms and snares.

The Israeli statements didn't say where the smuggling coverts ran from. An Israeli functionary said on May 15 there were 50 coverts connecting Rafah to the Sinai in Egypt, and raised concern that Hamas could use them to smuggle elderly operatives or hostages into Egyptian home. Egypt on Wednesday denied the actuality of any similar coverts.

The United States, Israel's closest supporter, reiterated its opposition to a major ground descent in Rafah on Tuesday but said it didn't believe such an operation was under way.

TheU.S. has, with Egypt and Qatar, been involved in sweats to intervene circular addresses between Israel and Hamas on arranging a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages. Those addresses have stalled, with both sides condemning the other for the lack of progress.

As the war drags on, malnutrition has come wide in Gaza as aid deliveries have braked to a teardrop, and the United Nations has advised of nascent shortage.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of theU.N. agency for Palestinian deportees( UNRWA), also called for an end to what he said were Israeli attacks on UNRWA staff and structures in Gaza.

In composition for the New York Times, he said Israeli officers were" delegitimizing UNRWA by effectively characterizing it as a terrorist association", and he described a" dangerous precedent of routine targeting ofU.N. staff and demesne."

His commentary followed allegations by Israel in January that 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in theOct. 7 attack on Israel. Israel didn't incontinently respond to his reflections.

The Gaza war has also augmented violence in the Israeli- engaged West Bank, another home where Palestinians seek statehood.

Israel said two dogfaces were killed in an overnight hit- and- run by a Palestinian automobilist in the West Bank megacity of Nablus. There was no immediate claim of responsibility from Palestinian coalitions.