Israel bombs Gaza as rift with US grows

AFP :
Israel bombed Gaza on Thursday in its war against Hamas fighters as a top White House adviser travelled to Jerusalem with a rift growing over civilian casualties.
The war, now in its third month, began after the Palestinian group’s launched a resistance campaign in Israel on October 7.
In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas. It began a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that has left swathes of Gaza in ruins. According to the Hamas-run health ministry’s latest toll, 18,608 people, mostly women and children, have been killed. Israeli air strikes across Gaza overnight killed at least 67 more, the health ministry said.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where violence since October 7 has surged to levels unseen in nearly two decades, the Palestinian health ministry said “a young man died from his wounds” as a result of ongoing Israeli “aggression” in Jenin.
US President Joe Biden, whose government has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, delivered his sharpest rebuke of the war on Wednesday. He said Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza was eroding international support.
But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to carry on “until victory, nothing less than that,” and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the war would continue “with or without international support.”
On Thursday, Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was due in Jerusalem for talks with Netanyahu and his war cabinet, a sign of the US pressure.
Sullivan told a Wall Street Journal event ahead of his trip that he would discuss a timetable to end the war and urge Israeli leaders “to move to a different phase from the kind of high-intensity operations that we see today.”
Netanyahu has said there is also “disagreement” with Washington over how Gaza would be governed after the war.