Israel launches strikes across Gaza as U.S. envoy visits region

19/5/2024 17:23

        Israeli planes and tanks pounded areas across the Gaza Strip overnight, residents said, as White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan travelled to the region amid U.S. calls for a more focused military campaign.
        
        Sullivan was due to hold talks with Israelis on Sunday and stress the need to go after Hamas militants in a targeted way, not with a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the White House has said.
        
        Israel has been pushing into the city that it says is the last bastion of Hamas forces. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled the area that was one of their few remaining places of refuge.
        
        Israeli forces also pushed deeper into the narrow alleyways of Jabalia in northern Gaza, returning to an area that they said they had cleared earlier in the conflict, residents said.
        
        The Israeli military has said its operations in Jabalia - the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps - are precise and meant to stop Hamas from reestablishing its grip there.