Israel steps up Gaza strikes over Christmas as fears rise of conflict spreading

Israel's war on Gaza will last months, Israel's military chief said, as a string of incidents outside the Palestinian territory highlighted the risk of the conflict spreading.

Meanwhile, at least 241 people have been killed and 382 injured in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the Strip's Health Ministry said, as Israel stepped up its attacks. In the occupied West Bank an Israeli operation in a Palestinian refugee camp killed six people and left several others wounded.

In a TV interview, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the war was "beyond a catastrophe," accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of planning "to get rid of the Palestinians." 

In a televised statement on Tuesday from the Gaza border, Israel's Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told reporters that the war would go on "for many months."

"There are no magic solutions, there are no shortcuts in dismantling a terrorist organization, only determined and persistent fighting," Halevi said. "We will reach Hamas' leadership too, whether it takes a week or if it takes months."

Israeli attacks intensified around Christmas, particularly in a central area just south of the seasonal waterway that bisects the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army told civilians to leave the area, although many said there was no safe place left to go.

"We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces, which has claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve," said UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Seif Magango on Tuesday.

"Israeli forces must take all measures available to protect civilians. Warnings and evacuation orders do not absolve them of the full range of their international humanitarian law obligations."

Despite global calls for a ceasefire in the 11-week-old war, Israel continues to pound Gaza, having killed nearly 21,000 people in 11 weeks, with thousands more feared buried under rubble. Nearly all the enclave's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.

That's after Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages on October 7 in the deadliest day in Israeli history. 

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Israel's closest ally, the United States, has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called "indiscriminate bombing."

Gaza authorities buried 80 unidentified Palestinians on Tuesday whose bodies were handed over by Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, the health ministry said.

According to the Islamic Waqf, or religious affairs ministry, the bodies were collected from the northern part of the Gaza Strip. They were buried in a long ditch at a Rafah cemetery in the south.

"Pictures are being taken to identify them later," a representative of the Gaza Islamic Waqf said during the burials.

War starting to spread

There are growing signs the conflict is starting to spread. Yemen's Iran-allied Houthis claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Tuesday on an Israeli-linked container ship in the Red Sea and for an attempt to attack Israel with drones.

Houthi fighters have been attacking ships they say have links to Israel in the entrance to the Red Sea, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. The attacks are a response to Israel's assault on Gaza, the fighters say.

Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed a senior leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Syria on Monday. According to reports from Iranian state media, Sayyed Razi Mousavi was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran, an important part of Iran's regional network of allies dubbed the "Axis of Resistance."

In a Revolutionary Guards statement read on state TV, it said that the "savage Zionist regime will pay for this crime."

And on the Lebanon border on Tuesday, Israel said Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at a church, wounding nine Israeli soldiers and a civilian, after which it fired rockets from near a mosque, drawing retaliatory airstrikes.

In India, meanwhile, there was an explosion near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi. Authorities said no staff were hurt.

"We are in a multi-front war and are coming under attack from seven fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran," Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told lawmakers. "We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres," he said, without specifying the one that had yet to see Israeli action.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer was meeting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Washington on Tuesday for talks on the war and the return of hostages, the White House said.

The United States is publicly calling for Israel in recent weeks to scale down its war to a more targeted operation. But Washington is still a major supporter of Israel, with U.S. forces having been attacked by anti-Israeli fighters in the Middle East.

The U.S. military carried out retaliatory airstrikes on Kataib Hezbollah fighters in Iraq on Monday after a drone attack on a U.S. base in Erbil left one U.S. service member in critical condition and wounded two.

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