Key Points
- Israel's defence minister has outlined what the next stage of its war in Gaza will look like.
- The slain deputy chief of Hamas has been buried in the Palestinian camp of Shatila in Beirut.
- The US secretary of state is due to visit the Middle East between 4-11 January.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant outlined Israel's plans for the next stage of its war in Gaza, with a new more targeted approach in the northern section of the enclave and a continuing pursuit of Hamas leaders in the south.
In a statement, he said that after the war Hamas would no longer control Gaza, which would be run by Palestinian bodies so long as there was no threat to Israel. Israel would reserve operational freedom of action but there would be no Israeli civilian presence.
Israeli shelling killed more than 20 Palestinians on Thursday, including 16 in Khan Younis in a southern coastal area of the Gaza Strip packed with people who had fled from other parts of the enclave, Gaza health officials said.
Among the dead were nine children, they said. Separately five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in Al-Nusseirat refugee camp, health officials told Reuters.
Gaza residents said Israeli planes and tanks had also bombarded two other refugee camps, prompting many to head south.
The Israeli military did not comment on the attacks, but reported fighting and air strikes against Hamas militants in the Khan Younis area on Thursday.
Israel's war against Hamas is nearing the three-month mark amid international concern that the conflict is spreading beyond Gaza, drawing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Hezbollah forces on the Lebanon-Israel border, and Red Sea shipping lanes.
Thousands attend funeral of Hamas deputy leader
This concern grew after a in the Lebanese capital Beirut. He was buried in the Palestinian camp of Shatila in the city on Thursday, amid thousands of mourners launching volleys of gunfire.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Wednesday that his powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite militia "cannot be silent" following the killing. Nasrallah said his forces would fight to the finish if Israel chose to extend the war to Lebanon, but he made no concrete threats to act against Israel in support of Hamas.
Mourners carry the coffin of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri, and the other Hamas members killed in a drone attack, during their funeral in Beirut on 4 January. Source: AAP / Abbas Salman
Israel neither confirmed nor denied assassinating Arouri.
It has promised to annihilate Hamas, which rules Gaza, following the group's assault in southern Israel on October 7 in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and some 240 were abducted.
Israel's ground and air blitz has laid waste to Gaza.
The total recorded Palestinian death toll had reached 22,438 by Thursday - almost 1 per cent of its 2.3 million population, the Gaza health ministry said. Some 125 of these were killed in the past 24 hours, it said.
Israel has said it has killed 8,000 fighters in Gaza.
Adding to the violence in the region, two explosions on Wednesday killed nearly 100 people during a memorial ceremony for the late Iranian General Qasem Soleimani at the cemetery in southeastern Iran where he is buried. The militant Sunni Muslim group Islamic State claimed responsibility.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to travel on Thursday for a week of diplomacy around the Middle East, the State Department said, adding he would discuss steps parties in the region could take to prevent the conflict from expanding.
Gaza bloodshed
In Thursday's reported strike in Al-Mawasi on the western side of Khan Younis, Israeli shells landed near tents erected in the area by displaced people, health ministry officials said.
Footage on Palestinian media showed several bodies wrapped in blankets inside a hospital morgue in Khan Younis.
"Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Wherever you go, there are strikes. In the country, next to the camps, in Al-Mawasi. There is no safe space," said Bahaa Abu Hatab, the brother of one of the dead.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its headquarters in Khan Younis was hit, killing one person and wounding others.
In its daily briefing, the Israeli military said Israeli warplanes killed three Hamas militants who had tried to detonate explosives next to ground troops, and Israeli soldiers killed two more.
Later the military said soldiers had destroyed an underground military compound on the Gaza Strip coast.
"Forces identified several tunnel shafts leading to a network of hundreds of meters of Hamas terror tunnels... during the searches, the soldiers found a weapons cache which included mortars, grenades, and RPG missiles," it said in a statement.
