Tel Aviv [Israel], October 27: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aims to "lead Israel to a decisive victory," he said on Wednesday, as world leaders called for efforts to protect civilians in Gaza.
Israel is "preparing for a ground attack. I will not say when, how and how many," Netanyahu said of the widely expected offensive in Gaza following the October 7 attacks by Islamist Hamas.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari later said the Israeli air force was continuing to attack Gaza targets to prepare for a ground offensive. "Every strike improves our situation for the next phases," he said.
But Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi warned that an Israeli offensive would result in more civilian deaths.
"It is important to seek to head off the ground incursion into the strip. This incursion could result in a very large number of civilian victims," al-Sissi said at a televised press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Cairo.
Their talks dealt with the necessity of de-escalating the current fighting, allowing more relief aid into Gaza and staving off potential enlargement of the conflict, according to al-Sissi.
US President Joe Biden again said that Israel has the right and responsibility to "respond to the slaughter" of people. "But that does not lessen the need to operate in line with the laws of war." Israel must do everything in its power to protect innocent civilians, he said.
Earlier, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said its aid operations in the besieged Gaza Strip were hours away from coming "to a stop" unless Israel lifts its blockade on fuel supplies.
The warning came as another convoy of trucks carrying badly needed supplies like medicine, baby formula and water passed through the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.
Since Saturday, a total of 62 trucks have made it into the Palestinian territory - an amount that relief groups call a drop in an ocean of needs. Only eight made the crossing by Wednesday afternoon, despite the hope that 20 would get in.
Israel has imposed a "complete siege" on Gaza since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas militants that left 1,400 people dead, most of them civilians. Some 220 others were abducted and are being held hostage in Gaza.
Apart from the trickle of aid that entered Gaza in recent days, the densely populated Mediterranean coastal strip of more than 2 million people has been largely cut off from food and essential supplies.
Israel refuses to allow fuel in, saying Hamas would divert it for use in their militant operations. Israel also says there are large storage tanks of fuel that militants are hoarding for themselves as they await a ground invasion.
With the war in its 19th day, Israel kept up it air attacks on Hamas positions in Gaza, and militants continued to fire rockets across the border.
By Hamas' count, the total number of people killed since Israel began its retaliatory strikes on October 7 stands at more than 6,500 people. The UN Children's Fund UNICEF said that 2,360 children have died in Israeli attacks.
Meanwhile, cross-border clashes between Israel and militants in Lebanon continued, with Israel striking areas in the south of the country.
Hezbollah said that they carried at lest three attacks against Israeli posts near the Israeli-Lebanese border, in retaliation for Israeli artillery shelled a cluster of villages in the central and eastern sectors of south Lebanon.
Source: Qatar Tribune