Iraq and Iran condemn U.S. strikes as Israel bombs Gaza's last refuge

Israeli forces are shelling the outskirts of Rafah, the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where hundreds of thousands of displaced people, penned against the border fence, feared a new assault with nowhere left to flee.

The U.S. also began retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria, its military said, after a drone attack in Jordan this week killed three U.S. troops, increasing concern about spiraling tensions in the Middle East.

The U.S. said its strikes targeted militants that Washington has blamed for the drone attack, the first deadly strike against U.S. forces since the Israel-Gaza war erupted in October.

"These airstrikes constitute a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government, and pose a threat that could lead Iraq and the region into dire consequences," Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasool said in a statement posted on social media platform X.

Iran has condemned the attacks that it believes "will naturally lead to the flames of the resistance," warning President Joe Biden to "act wisely" and stop supporting Israel.

More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are now homeless and crammed into Rafah on the Egyptian border. Tens of thousands have arrived in recent days, carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces last week launched one of the biggest assaults of the war to capture adjacent Khan Younis, the main southern city.

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If the Israeli tanks keep coming, "we will be left with two choices: stay and die or climb the walls into Egypt," said Emad, 55, a businessman and father of six, reached on a mobile phone chat app.

"Most of Gaza's population are in Rafah. If the tanks storm in, it will be a massacre like never before during this war."

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that troops would now "eliminate terror elements" in Rafah, one of the few areas not yet taken in an almost four-month-old assault.

As the only part of Gaza with access to the limited food and medical aid trickling across the border, Rafah and nearby parts of Khan Younis have become a warren of makeshift tents, clogged by winter mud. Wind and cold add to the misery, blowing tents down or flooding them and the ground in-between.

"What should we do? We live in multiple miseries, a war, starvation, and now the rain," said Um Badri, a mother of five from Gaza City, now in a tent in Khan Younis.

"We used to wait for winter, to enjoy watching the rain from the balcony of our house. Now, our house is gone, and the rainwater has flooded the tent we have ended up in."

With phone service mostly absent across Gaza, residents climbed a sandy bank at the border fence and crouched beside the razor wire hoping for an Egyptian mobile signal. Mariam Odeh was trying to get a message to family still in Khan Younis, "to tell them we are still alive and not martyrs like the others."

'Pressure cooker of despair'

The UN says rescuers can no longer reach the sick and wounded on the battlefield in Khan Younis, and the prospect of combat reaching Rafah is almost unthinkable.

"Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next," Jens Laerke of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told a briefing in Geneva.

The Gaza war was triggered by fighters from Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups who stormed across the border fence into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, Gaza health authorities say Israel has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, 112 of them in the past 24 hours, with thousands more bodies feared lost amid the ruins.

Imagery analyzed by the UN Satellite Centre shows that 30 percent of Gaza's buildings have also been destroyed or damaged in the Israeli offensive.

Hamas' armed wing said on Friday it had killed 15 Israeli soldiers in battles west of Gaza City, although no confirmation was immediately available from Israel. So far, Israel has confirmed the loss of more than 200 of its soldiers.

Mediators are awaiting a response from Hamas to a proposal for the war's first extended ceasefire, drafted last week with Israeli and U.S. spy chiefs and passed on by Egypt and Qatar. The only truce so far lasted just a week in late November, when Gazan fighters freed 110 women, children and foreign hostages.

The proposal envisages a first phase lasting 40 days, during which Hamas would free the remaining civilian hostages, followed by further phases to hand over soldiers and bodies, according to a Palestinian official. But the sides remain far apart over what would follow.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala said in a joint statement that "any negotiations should lead to a complete end to the aggression, the withdrawal of the occupation army outside the Gaza Strip, the lifting of the siege" as well as reconstruction, provision of Gaza's basic needs and a full exchange of captives.

However, Israel says Hamas must be eradicated before it pulls its troops out of Gaza or frees detainees, and its main ally, the U.S., has not publicly set any goals that call that into question.

Blinken returns to Middle East

Washington said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would work for a humanitarian pause and the release of hostages when he begins his latest trip to Israel, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar from Sunday.

His visit comes as the U.S. military launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 85 targets linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and armed groups it is allied with, in retaliation for last weekend's attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops.

The strikes, which included the use of long-range B-1 bombers flown from the U.S., were the first in a multi-tiered response by President Joe Biden's administration to the attack by the resistance groups, and more U.S. military operations were expected in the coming days.

While they did not target sites inside Iran, the strikes signal a further escalation of conflict in the Middle East, hitting targets including command and control centers, rockets, missiles and drone storage facilities, as well as logistics and munition supply chain facilities, the U.S. military said.

The Syrian Defense Ministry said that U.S. forces' "blatant air aggression" led to a number of civilians and soldiers being killed and others being wounded and some significant damage to public and private property.

The Pentagon has said it does not want war in the region and does not believe Tehran, who it is blaming for the escalation, wants war either, even as Republican pressure has increased on Biden to deal a blow directly. "We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else, but the president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces," U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

On another front, the U.S.'s main regional ally Israeli said it had intercepted a missile heading for Israel in the area of the Red Sea, and Yemen's Houthis, confirmed they had fired ballistic missiles in the direction of the Israeli port and resort city of Eilat.

"The Yemeni armed forces will not hesitate to carry out further military operations against the Zionist enemy on land and at sea until the cessation of aggression and lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip," the Houthis' military spokesperson said.

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