Health ministry in Gaza says death toll tops 10,000 as Israel steps up war

Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine — The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 10,000 people, the health ministry said on Monday after nearly one month of Israeli heavy bombardment of the besieged coastal enclave. 

The total included 292 killed in the overnight barrage which hit two paediatric hospitals and Gaza's only psychiatric hospital, the ministry said.

"These are massacres! They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants, women and children," Mahmud Meshmesh, resident of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, told AFP.

"We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble," he said as crowds prayed around corpses wrapped in white shrouds.

Ground forces with tanks have flooded the northern half of the Gaza Strip and tightened an encirclement of Gaza City, effectively splitting the territory in two.

Israel’s ally the United States sent its top diplomat Antony Blinken on a whirlwind Middle East tour that wrapped up on Monday in Turkey, where again his host pressed for an Israeli ceasefire, which Washington has declined to endorse.

The heads of major United Nations agencies issued a joint statement also calling for a ceasefire inside the territory of 2.4 million people where an Israeli siege has cut off most water, food and fuel supplies.

“It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” the statement said.

The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt reopened on Monday to allow the evacuation of foreigners and dual nationals, the government said, ending a two-day closure prompted by a dispute over the passage of ambulances.

Six ambulances carrying wounded Gazans arrived in Egypt on Monday as evacuations resumed, a border official said.

On his regional tour, Blinken called for “humanitarian pauses” while rejecting Arab countries’ demands for a ceasefire.

After meeting his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan on Monday, Blinken said Washington was working “very aggressively” to expand aid for trapped civilians in Gaza, but he did not provide details before boarding a flight to Japan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was travelling across his country’s remote northeast on Monday, apparently snubbing Blinken.

NATO member Turkey, which is allied to the Palestinians but also has ties with Israel, has said it is recalling its ambassador to Israel and breaking off contacts with Netanyahu.

West Bank unrest 

The war has exacerbated tensions in the occupied West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and settlers since it started, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Israeli occupation forces killed four Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.

The Israeli military said on Monday it had arrested Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, 22, in a raid in her West Bank town of Nabi Salih on suspicion of “inciting violence and terrorist activities”.

Overall, the army said more than 1,350 Palestinians had been arrested across the West Bank since October 7.

Tamimi became prominent at age 14 when she was filmed biting an Israeli soldier to prevent him from arresting her younger brother and for later slapping another Israeli soldier.