GAZA/AMMAN, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Arab leaders publicly pressed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday to secure an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Palestinians said an Israeli air strike killed at least 15 people in a U.N.-run school being used as a shelter.
In a rare open display of disagreement, the top U.S. diplomat pushed back as he stood next to his Jordanian and Egyptian counterparts at a news conference, saying a ceasefire would only let Hamas regroup and launch more attacks on Israel.
Blinken met the Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers in Amman four weeks after Hamas fighters burst over the border into Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 240 people hostage.
Israel has since struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground assault, stirring global alarm at humanitarian conditions in the enclave and, Gaza health officials said on Saturday, killing more than 9,488 Palestinians.
“Right now we have to make sure that this war stops,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told the news conference.
Blinken said all were agreed on the need for peace and that the current status quo in Gaza cold not hold, but he acknowledged there were differences between Washington, which has called only for pauses to led aid into Gaza, and its allies.
“A ceasefire now would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” said Blinken, on his second trip to the region since Israel and Hamas went to war. “No nation, none of us would accept that.”
Earlier on Saturday, Palestinian witnesses said Israel hit Al-Fakhoura school in Jabalia, where thousands of evacuees were living, in the morning.
The Israeli military said that according to a preliminary inquiry it had not targeted the location “but the explosion may have been a result of IDF fire aimed at another target. The circumstances of the incident are under review.”
Juliette Touma, director of communication for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), said the U.N-run school, which is in the Gaza City area, had been hit.
“At least one strike hit the schoolyard where there were tents for displaced families. Another strike hit inside the school where women were baking bread,” Touma said by phone.
Reuters footage of the aftermath showed broken furniture and other belongings lying on the ground, patches of blood spilled on the ground and over food and people crying.
“I was standing here when three bombings happened, I carried a body and another decapitated body with my own hands,” a young boy said in video obtained by Reuters, crying in despair. “God will take my vengeance.”
Nearby, a resident comforted a woman in shock.
One man asked angrily: “Since when has it become normal to strike shelters? This is so unfair.”
[1/13]U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry (not pictured) and Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi (not pictured), in Amman, Jordan November 4, 2023. REUTERS/Alaa Al Sukhni Acquire Licensing Rights
The ministry of health in Gaza said another Israeli missile strike killed two women at the door of the Nasser Children Hospital. Several more people were injured, it said. There was no immediate Israeli response to that report.
A series of reported air strikes over the past week have devastated parts of the Jabalia refugee camp, the largest of several refugee settlements in Gaza, killing at least 195 people, according to Palestinian authorities.
PALESTINIANS SAY TOO SCARED TO MOVE
Israel last month ordered all civilians to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City where it says Hamas militants are hiding in tunnels, and head to the south of the enclave.
The military said it would enable Palestinians to travel on a main Gaza Strip highway, the Salah a-Din road, during a three-hour window on Saturday afternoon. “If you care about yourself and your loved ones, heed our instruction to head south,” it said in a social media post in Arabic.
Several residents told Reuters they were too afraid to use the road due to Israeli forces and many posted warnings on social media that Israeli tanks were stationed on it.
U.S. Special Envoy David Satterfield said in Amman that between 800,000 to a million people had moved to the south of the Gaza Strip, while 350,000-400,000 remained in northern Gaza City and its environs.
Israel has imposed a full blockade on Gaza and allowed very little aid in from Egypt, saying it fears it would be stolen by Hamas. Satterfield said there were no recorded instances of Hamas seizing aid.
BORDER CLASHES
In what appeared to presage a widening of Israel’s ground offensive, the military issued footage showing armoured bulldozers churning up northern Gaza areas in what it described as “creating access routes for forces”.
A combined tank and combat engineering unit carried out a “pinpoint raid” in the southern Gaza Strip “to map out buildings and neutralise explosives”, it said.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it carried out simultaneous attacks on Israeli positions at the Lebanese border on Saturday, as residents of south Lebanon reported some of the fiercest Israeli strikes yet during weeks of cross-border clashes.
The Israeli army said its warplanes had struck Hezbollah targets in response to an earlier attack from Lebanese territory, and was accompanying the air strikes with artillery and tank shelling.
The Hezbollah movement in Lebanon is backed by Iran, as is Hamas. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned that conflict could spread if Israel continued bombing Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian protests took place on Saturday in European capitals including London, Berlin and Paris to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Simon Lewis and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis, Ingrid Melander and Andrew Heavens; Editing by Rami Ayyub, Diane Craft, Michael Perry and William Mallard and Philippa Fletcher
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
