Gazans deal with heat and heavy fighting as Israel-U.S. tensions rise

The World Health Organization has warned scorching heat in the Gaza Strip could exacerbate health problems for Palestinians, while the World Food Programme says a massive public health crisis is looming due to the lack of clean water, food and medical supplies.

The warnings come as Israeli forces continued to pound Rafah and other areas across the Gaza Strip and engaged in combat with fighters led by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, according to residents and Israel's military on Friday.

Tanks were forcing their way into the western and northern parts of the city, having already captured the east, south and center. Israel's offensive forced a new wave of displacement from the city, which had been sheltering more than a million displaced people, most of whom have been forced to flee again.

Palestinian health officials said at least 12 Palestinians had been killed in separate Israeli military strikes on Friday.

The Israeli military said its forces were conducting "precise, intelligence-based" actions in the Rafah area, where troops were involved in close-quarter combat and had located tunnels used by militants. 

More than eight months into the war in Gaza, Israel's advance is now focused on the two last areas its forces had yet to storm: Rafah on Gaza's southern edge and the area surrounding Deir al-Balah in the center.

Richard Peeperkorn, WHO's representative for Gaza and the West Bank, said: "We've seen massive displacement over the last weeks and months, and we know that combination and the heat can cause a rise in diseases.

"We have water contamination because of hot weather, and we will have much more food spoilage because of the high temperature. We will get insect mosquitoes and flies, dehydration, heat stroke."

Extreme heat has killed hundreds worldwide as the northern hemisphere summer begins. Peeperkorn said in Gaza, due to poor water and sanitation conditions, the number of cases of diarrhoea was 25 times higher than usual.

Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery and hepatitis A, according to the WHO. The WHO has been unable to carry out medical evacuations from Gaza since the closure of the Rafah crossing in early May.

Peeperkorn said an estimated 10,000 patients still required medical evacuation from Gaza, half of whom are suffering from ailments related to the war.

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Meanwhile, relations between allies the U.S. and Israel over the war in Gaza appear increasingly strained after the White House expressed deep disappointment over criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

Concerning the flow of arms to Israel, Netanyahu said on Friday: "This is crucial. It's crucial for our common war aims to defeat Hamas and to prevent an escalation in Lebanon to a full-fledged war to have this supply."

Netanyahu spoke after he published an English-language video in which he accused the Biden administration of withholding arms to Israel.

In a rare account of normally private diplomatic conversations, Netanyahu also said he told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that it was "inconceivable" that in the past few months Washington was withholding weapons and ammunitions.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. had directly expressed displeasure to Israel. 

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