Israel Bombs Gaza As Middle East Tense After Iranian Attack

Israel launched more deadly strikes on besieged Gaza on Thursday as world powers watched nervously whether the country would retaliate against a weekend attack by its arch enemy Iran

Jerusalem, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Apr, 2024) Israel launched more deadly strikes on besieged Gaza on Thursday as world powers watched nervously whether the country would retaliate against a weekend attack by its arch enemy Iran.

The Israeli army said it had bombed dozens of targets in the Palestinian coastal territory of 2.4 million people, more than six months into the bloodiest ever Gaza war.

Weeks of talks towards an Israel-Hamas truce and hostage release deal have stalled, according to Qatar's prime minister who said the Gulf emirate was now "reassessing our role as mediator".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also stressed on Wednesday that Israel "reserves the right to protect itself" against Iran.

The Islamic republic last weekend carried out its first ever attack to directly target its regional foe but Israel, backed by its allies, intercepted most of the 300 missiles and drones and suffered no deaths.

Iran's attack was retaliation for an April 1 air strike, which it blamed on Israel, on the consular annex of its embassy in Damascus.

Iran's attack on Israel "is succeeding in taking the focus, particularly the media spotlight, off of the Gaza famine and the Gaza war and the loss of life that is taking place there," Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a middle East/North Africa specialist at the University of Cambridge's POLIS department, told AFP.

"And that was very much I think what Israel planned to do," she said.

An AFP correspondent in Gaza said Israeli artillery shelling and aircraft strikes again hit Gaza City overnight.

The Israeli military said it struck dozens of targets over the past day.

The war started after Hamas launched their unprecedented attack on October 7.

Gaza's civil defence said Thursday it had recovered 11 more bodies in the southern city of Khan Yunis during the night.

Israel had also bombed the far-southern city of Rafah.

Gaza rescue crews recovered the corpses of eight family members, including five children and two women, from a house in Rafah's Al-Salam neighbourhood, the civil defence service said.

One woman in Rafah, Jamalat Ramidan, told AFP she and crying children fled the carnage of a strike, stumbling over "body parts and corpses scattered all over the place".

- Stalled truce talks -

Talks toward a ceasefire have stalled, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, despite months of effort also involving United States and Egyptian officials.

He said his country was undertaking "a complete re-evaluation of its role because there has been damage to Qatar", which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Israel has faced growing global opposition to the Gaza war, which the United Nations and aid agencies say has left the north of the territory on the brink of famine.

The UN Security Council was preparing to vote soon on an Algeria-drafted resolution for full United Nations membership for a Palestinian state, diplomatic sources said.

However, the veto-wielding United States has repeatedly expressed opposition to such a move.