Israel presses Gaza offensive

Israel resisted the United States' calls for a pause in fighting in Gaza City and pressed its siege of the Palestinian enclave Saturday, with deadly strikes hitting an ambulance convoy allegedly used by Hamas terrorists to smuggle out their wounded cadres.

Israeli ground forces have encircled Gaza's largest city, trying to rout Hamas terrorists who killed an estimated 1,400 people inside Israel, most of them civilians, on 7 October, and rescue hundreds of hostages.

Israel's military said it had targeted an ambulance used by a "Hamas terrorist cell" and had "neutralized" those inside near the territory's largest hospital Al-Shifa on Friday.

Hamas said 13 people were killed.

The Red Crescent said a convoy of five vehicles had been destined for the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, when they were struck multiple times.

One vehicle had been transporting a 35-year-old with shrapnel wounds.

An Agence France-Presse journalist saw multiple bodies beside the blood-splattered Palestinian Red Crescent vehicle.

A senior White House official on Friday said that Hamas had tried to use a US-brokered deal on opening the Egyptian border crossing to get its cadres out.

Hamas provided a list of wounded Palestinians for evacuation with one-third of the names those of Hamas members and fighters, the official said.

"That was just unacceptable to Egypt, to us, to Israel," the official added.

Egypt's health ministry said just 17 wounded Palestinians were evacuated for treatment in Egyptian hospitals Friday instead of the 28 originally planned because of the "events" at Al-Shifa.

School hit

Hamas also claimed that tank shelling of the Osama bin Zaid Boys School north of Gaza City killed 12 people.

Ambulance teams rushed into the debris-littered building to aid the injured and remove the dead.

A long row of clothes and washing still hung from windows on the building's first storey, evidence that the school had become a temporary home for some of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced by the war.

Israel's military describes Gaza City as "the center of the Hamas terror organization."

Israeli military spokesperson Richard Hecht said forces were engaged in "close combat" with Hamas fighters who were armed "with anti-tank missiles, explosive devices and more."

Israel says it is targeting Hamas operatives, weapons stores, tunnel complexes, drone launching posts and command centers.

But with strikes taking place in densely populated urban areas, many civilians have died.

Hamas terrorists claim more than 9,200 Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel's bombardments.

On Thursday, AFP's Gaza office was badly damaged when a nearby building was struck by Israeli forces. A spokesperson of the army said the building was not targeted by Israel's military.

Hamas disinformation

Meanwhile, Israel's embassy in Manila said in a statement Saturday that Hamas inflates and distorts casualty figures in a warning to media and the public against falling victim to Hamas' disinformation and propaganda.

"Hamas does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its reporting, nor does it declare which casualties were a result of Hamas's own fire," the embassy said.

The embassy reminded that Hamas leaders have "stated in international media interviews that no Israeli civilians were killed by its member on 7 October, despite releasing in Arab channels propaganda videos taken by Hamas militants clearly documenting the systematic and wanton murdering of civilian women, children, and men."

"No Hamas official, or any entity controlled by Hamas or subject to Hamas intimidation, can be relied upon as a trustworthy source," it said.

Civilians not targeted

Israel's embassy in Manila also said that Hamas consistently and forcibly acts to frustrate efforts of Israel's military to minimize civilian casualty "to maximize Palestinian casualties in order to invite condemnation of Israel rather than of its own inhumanity."

The embassy added that it is Hamas' tactic to embed themselves within the civilian population and prevent the evacuation of civilians.

According to the embassy, Israel's military "has dropped leaflets over areas of expected attacks with instructions to evacuate and how to do so, broadcasted over radio and through social media messages warning civilians to distance themselves from Hamas operations, and in some cases made individual phone calls to occupants of targets, warning them of impending attacks."

Israel's military "has also published evacuation routes in order to allow safer civilian passage" and "has repeatedly delayed intensifying its operations in northern Gaza so as to allow for continued evacuation."

WITH AFP