TEL AVIV: Israel pounded northern Gaza with airstrikes, and Hamas fired fresh salvos of rockets into southern Israel, where warning sirens sounded.
The rocket attacks caused no reported injuries.
The Israel Defense Forces said its fighter jets struck multiple Hamas command centers in Gaza overnight into Saturday. Palestinian media reported airstrikes in northern Gaza hit six homes and killed at least 19 people.
Israeli fighter jets also struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. The Iran-backed Lebanese group and Israel’s military have been trading fire at the frontier almost daily. Hezbollah said that six of its fighters were killed Saturday on the border, raising to 19 the number of its fighters killed in the last two weeks.
An Israeli soldier was hit by an anti-tank missile and severely wounded, the military reported, and two more soldiers were lightly injured in the incident.
The fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border is the worst since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cautioned Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati in a call Saturday that the Lebanese people would be affected if his country were drawn into the war, the State Department said.
Also, Israel said Saturday that its airstrikes would intensify.
Asked about an expected invasion, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters Saturday night, “We will deepen our attacks to minimize the dangers to our forces in the next stages of the war. We are going to increase the attacks, from today.”
He repeated his advice for residents of Gaza City to move south.
Cairo summit
A Cairo summit hosted by Egypt on Saturday failed to reach an agreement on how to contain the violence between Israel and Hamas. Arab leaders condemned the Israeli bombardment of Gaza while mostly Western countries said civilians should be shielded. Israel and senior U.S. officials did not attend.
At the summit in Cairo, Jordan’s King Abdullah II decried what he called global silence about Israel’s attacks, which have killed more than 4,000 people in Gaza, the Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday, and made more than 1 million homeless.
He urged an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The message the Arab world is hearing is that Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones,” he said, adding he was outraged and grieved by acts of violence waged against innocent civilians in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and in Israel.
France called for a humanitarian corridor into Gaza that it said could lead to a cease-fire. Britain and Germany both urged Israel’s military to show restraint and Italy said it was important to avoid escalation.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally and a vital player in all past peace efforts in the region, sent its Cairo charge d’affaires, who did not address the summit in public.
(VOA)
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