Israel rejects US plea for pause in war, Gaza refugee camp hit

Deir Al-Balah (Gaza Strip): Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens, health officials said.

The strike came as Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory's Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for a pause to get aid to desperate civilians.

Israel has rejected the idea of halting its offensive, even for brief humanitarian pauses proposed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his current tour of the region.

Gaza's Health Ministry said more than 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, and that number is likely to rise as Israeli troops advance into dense, urban neighborhoods.

Airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza overnight, killing at least 40 people and wounding 34 others, the Health Ministry said. It said first responders and residents were still digging through the rubble, hoping to find survivors.

An Associated Press reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, who had been brought in after the strike. A surviving child was led down the hospital corridor by an adult holding her hand, her clothes caked in dust, an expression of shock on her face.

Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multi-story homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.

“It was a true massacre,” he said early Sunday while standing on the wreckage of destroyed homes.

Israeli planes once again dropped leaflets urging people to head south during a four-hour window on Sunday. Crowds of people could be seen walking down Gaza's main northsouth highway on foot with only what they could carry in their arms, while others led donkey carts.

An Israeli airstrike overnight struck a water well in Tal al-Zatar in northern Gaza, cutting off water for tens of thousands of people, the Hamas-run municipality in the town of Beit Lahia said in a statement early Sunday.

The United Nations said that about 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, or about 70% of the total population, have fled their homes. Food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities in the region is running out, the UN stated.

In the occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were shot dead during an Israeli arrest raid in an area situated just out - side Jerusalem.

Blinken meets Palestine Prez in West Bank

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought his Mideast diplomatic push on the IsraelHamas war to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his latest bid to ease civilian suffering in the Gaza Strip and begin to sketch out a post-conflict scenario.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken reaffirmed the US commitment to the delivery of life-saving assistance and resumption of essential services in Gaza.

Israeli minister says nuking Gaza 'an option!'

An Israeli minister from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party on Sunday said that dropping an atomic bomb on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip was "an option", prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend him from government meetings indefinitely.

In a radio interview, Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that "there are no non-combatants in Gaza" and providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute "a failure".