IDF spokesperson confirms Israel carried out strike on Jabalia refugee camp Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari is giving a televised news conference, where he said the Israeli military “managed to eliminate the terrorist murderer Ibrahim Biari” on Tuesday. Biari was “the main leader of combat” since Israel forces entered northern Gaza, Hagari said. During his “elimination, many terrorists were killed,” he said. He said the targeting of the building where Biari was in also “led to the collapse of other things because there was a very extensive infrastructure there”. Qatar warns Israeli strike on Jabalia refugee camp could ‘undermine mediation’ Qatar’s foreign ministry has “strongly condemned” the Israeli strike on Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, warning that the expansion of Israel’s attacks is a “dangerous escalation” that would “undermine mediation and de-escalation efforts”. In a statement, the ministry said the Qatari state considered the bombing of the camp to be “a new massacre against the defenseless Palestinian people, especially children and women.” The expansion of Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip to include civilian objects, like hospital, schools, population centres and shelters for displaced people, is a dangerous escalation in the course of confrontations, which would undermine mediation and de-escalation efforts. In addition, it portends further tension, violence and instability. The Israeli military said it had targeted the camp to kill Ibrahim Biari – a key Hamas commander linked to the group’s 7 October attack on Israel who, it said, had taken over civilian buildings in Gaza City with his fighters. The US is “deeply concerned” by the significant uptick in violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said. In a statement posted to social media, she said the US urges Israel to prevent these attacks. US and Israel considering peacekeeping force in Gaza - report The US and Israel are considering the possibility of a multinational force that could include American, UK, French troops in the Gaza Strip, in the event that Israeli forces are successful in ousting Hamas, according to a report. US and Israeli officials exploring options for the future of Gaza have also discussed a second option that would establish a peacekeeping force modeled on one that oversees a 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the conversations. A third option would see Gaza put under temporary UN oversight, it said. The sources noted that the conversations are still at an early stage and much could change. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, alluded to the challenge of coming up with a plan for the future of Gaza when he addressed a Senate panel on Tuesday. “We can’t have a reversion to the status quo with Hamas running Gaza,” Blinken told the Senate appropriations committee. “We also can’t have — and the Israelis start with this proposition themselves — Israel running or controlling Gaza.” He added: Between those shoals are a variety of possible permutations that we’re looking at very closely now, as are other countries. A witness to the Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza told CNN he saw an F-16 aircraft fire several missiles at the camp. Mohammad Ibrahim said he was waiting in line to buy bread when he saw “seven to eight missiles fell from an F-16” on al-Yafawiya neighbourhood in the camp, on Gaza City’s outskirts. He told the outlet: There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place. It felt like the end of the world. The US has announced it will send a further 300 troops to the Middle East to support those already deployed in the region. Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Patrick Ryder said on Tuesday: These additional troops will provide capabilities and explosive ordnance disposal communications and other support enablers for forces already in the region. He did not specify where in the Middle East the additional troops will be, but said they would not go to Israel. He added: hey are intended to support regional deterrence efforts and further bolster us force protection capabilities. Médecins Sans Frontières said it was “horrified” after dozens of people were killed by Israeli airstrikes at a refugee camp in northern Gaza today. At least six airstrikes hit residential areas in the Jabalia refugee camp on Gaza City’s outskirts on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people and injuring about 150 people, Hamas officials said. The Israeli military said it had targeted the camp to kill a key Hamas commander who, it said, had taken over civilian buildings in Gaza City with his fighters. In a statement, the medical charity said many wounded people arrived to Dar al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza after the attack. It cited MSF nurse, Mohammed Hawajreh, as saying: Young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns. They came without their families. Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients. Palestinian women are being forced to give birth without anaesthesia, undergoing caesareans whilst awake and without pain killers amid intense bombardment of the Gaza Strip, an international charity has warned. In a statement, ActionAid said it was “very concerned” about a lack of clean water contributing to a rise in sickness and a lack of hygiene, alongside the “serious deterioration in living conditions” across the Palestinian territory. What little aid is “trickling” into Gaza will “barely touch the sides” of the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Gaza, it said. It described the situation for hospitals in northern Gaza as particularly “precarious”, with Al-Quds and Al-Shifa hospitals not receiving any aid supplies at all due to ongoing hostilities. “The chaos and horror unleashed in Gaza is affecting women in devastating ways,” Soraida Hussein-Sabbah, a gender and advocay specialist based in Ramallah ActionAid, said. Every day we hear of doctors delivering the babies of women who are dying in childbirth. It is catastrophic. What are Israel’s aims in launching Gaza ground invasion? A battle in three dimensions is complex enough, but Ben Barry, an analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies, said that Israel’s military had also been set contradictory political goals by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. On Saturday, Netanyahu said the invasion’s objective was to destroy “Hamas’s governing and military capabilities and to bring the hostages home”. The first part may imply an aggressive assault with less regard for casualties, where Hamas tunnels are mined by armed Israeli robots, or simply sealed off. But freeing hostages, Barry argues, requires a more measured approach where the 240 people held by Hamas are located and rescued in what are likely to be complex individual operations. “You would need good intelligence and to proceed carefully,” Barry added. Another question is how Hamas will respond. Its military strength and capacity is unclear, but its leaders have choices. Conventionally, Israel measures the size of the Hamas fighting force at about 30,000, and while about 1,200 were killed during the October attack, the impact of the Israeli bombardment is unclear. If its fighters remain cohesive, there is the option of fighting for Gaza City and trying to inflict immediate casualties on the Israeli military. Alternatively, they could hang back, retreating to the southern part of Gaza and taking hostages with them if possible, and allowing Israel to take control of the north relatively quickly. Israel retains formidable conventional military advantages: air superiority and a well-trained, modern fighting force with 400 tanks at the ready and more in storage. Its standing army is estimated to number 126,000, strengthened by the call-up of 360,000 reservists, but its military has to guard the north from Hezbollah in Lebanon and contend with a deteriorating security situation on the West Bank. By contrast, Hamas has limited equipment. A video it released of its fighters showed they were armed with rocket-propelled grenades. Verifiable information is hard to come by, but the limited evidence emerging from the combat zone suggests that the IDF is seeking to encircle Gaza City, probably as a prelude to trying to capture what was the capital of the strip. Tanks were filmed having advanced to cut the main north-south Salah al-Din road south of Gaza City on Monday, although subsequent reports suggested the road had reopened, potentially to allow a porous encirclement, where fighters and civilians are allowed to escape a looming siege, in theory making it easier for the attackers. Urban warfare is the most dangerous form of fighting, and as the near year-long battle of Bakhmut in Ukraine showed, even a ruined landscape still confers significant advantages to the defenders. But Hamas has gone further, building a sophisticated, cement reinforced tunnel network underground, from which fighters can endure the most sustained aerial attack, knowing that an Israeli invasion may one day come. Israel’s ground invasion of the northern Gaza Strip began on Friday evening, an urban warfare operation that is likely to be lengthy, fraught with danger for its military and Palestinian civilians and whose ultimate goals remain uncertain. It began more than three weeks after Hamas’s surprising and brutal cross-border attack of 7 October, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, and comes amid what the monitoring group Airwars says is an aerial bombardment that “far outpaces” the number of bombs dropped in “the deadliest months” of the US-led war against Islamic State. Israeli forces have already fired more than 8,000 munitions into north and south Gaza, according to the country’s military, in an attempt to soften up Hamas resistance, but which has also led to thousands of casualties, including dozens at the Jabalia camp in the north of the strip that was hit on Tuesday. Video and pictures released by the Israel Defence Force on Tuesday show soldiers and tanks entering a shattered urban terrain, with the Israeli military and Hamas describing fighting fierce battles, although these are likely to be only initial skirmishes for strategic position. The US Senate has confirmed former treasury secretary Jack Lew as the new US ambassador to Israel. Lew was approved 53-43, with two Republicans Rand Paul and of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina breaking rank to back him. Two French children killed in Gaza Strip Two French children have been killed in the north of the Gaza Strip, France’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry said the children’s mother was thought to be suffering from injuries, along with her third child, Reuters reported. It reiterated its call for a humanitarian pause in the fighting and demanded that French nationals and foreign citizens to be allowed to leave Gaza. Blinken to arrive in Israel on Friday to meet Netanyahu The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will arrive in Israel on Friday to meet with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Axios reported.