Israel has agreed to delay an expected invasion of Gaza for now so that the US can rush missile defences to the region to protect its troops there, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing US and Israeli officials.
Israel is also taking into account in its planning the effort to supply humanitarian aid to civilians inside Gaza, as well as diplomatic efforts to free hostages held by Hamas militants, the report said.
Threats to US troops were of paramount concern, it said.
The US military and other officials believe their forces will be targeted by militant groups once the invasion of the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory starts.
The US is hurrying to deploy nearly a dozen air-defence systems to the region, according to the Journal.
Reuters reported on Monday that Washington advised Israel to hold off on a ground assault in the Gaza Strip and is keeping Qatar — a broker with the Palestinian militants — apprised of those talks as its tries to free more hostages and prepare for a possible wider regional war.
Meanwhile, Israel intensified its overnight bombing of southern Gaza, where officials said record numbers of Palestinians were killed again, as a showdown loomed at the UN on Wednesday over desperately needed aid.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from north to south in the tiny, crowded enclave after Israel warned them it would bombard the north, including Gaza City, to wipe out Hamas after its killing and kidnapping spree in Israel on October 7.
The Palestinian death toll now exceeds 6,500, Gaza’s health ministry said on Wednesday. Reuters was unable to independently verify the ministry’s figures.Sami Al-Bayouk resorted to a donkey and cart to carry away one of six family members killed in an overnight air strike on Khan Younis in Gaza’s south. “Death is everywhere,” he said.
Palestinian anger over the toll has been inflamed further by a sense of betrayal as many of those who heeded Israel’s call to move south are also being killed.
The Israeli military says that Hamas, which seized control in Gaza in 2007, has entrenched itself among the civilian population everywhere.
One overnight strike brought down several apartment buildings in Khan Younis.
“This is something not normal, we have not heard something like this before,” said Khader Abu Odah, one of many shell-shocked residents waiting for an excavator to lift rubble so they could look for survivors.
Israel said its latest strikes had eliminated more Hamas operatives including the head of the Islamist group’s battalion for Khan Younis, Tayseer Bebasher.
It said Hamas tunnel shafts, command centres, weapons caches and rocket launch positions were targeted, plus a cell of Hamas divers trying to infiltrate Israel by sea near Kibbutz Zikim.
In Gaza City, rescue workers pulled an apparently lifeless young child out of rubble before trying to calm an agitated, partially buried man crying out his family’s names.
“They are OK, I swear,” one rescuer said in video footage from the scene.
Israeli tanks and troops are massed on the border with Gaza, amid growing international pressure to exercise restraint to avoid endangering more than 200 Israeli hostages in Gaza and enable aid to reach stricken Palestinian civilians in the enclave.
Israeli fighter jets also struck Syrian army infrastructure in response to rockets fired from Syria, an ally of Iran, the Israeli military said. The strike stoked concerns that its war with Iran-backed Hamas will ignite the wider region.
Syrian state media said Israel had killed eight soldiers and wounded seven more near the southwestern city of Deraa, and hit Aleppo airport in the northwest, already out of action.
Israel did not accuse the Syrian army of launching rockets but is suspicious of Iran, its arch-enemy which has a significant military and security presence in Syria.
Iran has sought regional ascendancy for decades and backs armed groups in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere, as well as Hamas. It has warned Israel to stop its onslaught on Gaza.
Israel said its forces also hit five squads in south Lebanon preparing attacks. Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah group said 42 of its fighters had been killed since border clashes with Israel resumed after the Gaza war erupted.
Israeli-Hezbollah clashes have unnerved civilians on both sides of the border. “You don’t know what will happen in a few days. You just wait,” said Rabab Yousef, a mother who lost a daughter under the rubble of an Israeli air strike in 2006.
Reuters
