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Women mourn their relatives killed in an Israeli army strike in Khan Younis in Gaza yesterday AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana/Alamy

Israel calls up tens of thousands of reservists as it seeks to increase attacks on Gaza

At least 11 people, including three infants, were killed by an Israeli strike on a refugee camp yesterday.

ISRAEL HAS ISSUED orders to call up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of an expanded offensive in Gaza, Israeli media has reported, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked truce mediator Qatar.

Several news outlets reported the military had begun sending the orders for reservists to replace conscripts and active-duty soldiers in Israel and the occupied West Bank so they can be redeployed to Gaza.

According to Israel’s public broadcaster, the security cabinet is scheduled to meet on today to approve an expansion of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Israel ramped up major operations across Gaza on 18 March amid deadlock over how to proceed with a two-month ceasefire.

Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office, had brokered the truce alongside the US and Egypt that came into effect in January. Efforts to secure a new deal however have appeared to stall in recent weeks.

Netanyahu accused Qatar of “playing both sides with its double talk”. Posting on X, he said Qatar had to “decide if it’s on the side of civilisation or if it’s on the side of Hamas barbarism”.

The Israeli prime minister, under pressure from his far-right supporters, without whom he would lose his governing coalition, has been increasingly vocal in his calls to continue the war since the restart of the Gaza offensive.

Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari rejected the “inflammatory” comments, charging that they “fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility”.

Israel has also blocked all aid deliveries to Gaza since 2 March, prompting warnings from UN agencies of impending humanitarian disaster.

Several thousand Israelis demonstrated outside the defence ministry in Tel Aviv yesterday, demanding action from the government to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

“We’re here because we want the hostages home. We’re here because we don’t believe that the war in Gaza today, currently, is justified at all,” Arona Maskil, a 64-year-old demonstrator, told AFP.

The Israeli government says its renewed offensive is aimed at forcing Hamas to free its remaining captives, although critics charge that it puts them in mortal danger.

A statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum argued that “any escalation in the fighting will put the hostages… in immediate danger”.

In Gaza, the civil defence agency said that an overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people, including three infants.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal say they were killed in the “bombardment of the Al-Bayram family home in Khan Younis camp”.

Bassal told AFP that eight of the dead had been identified and were all from the same extended family, including a boy and girl, both one, and a month-old baby.

An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed the strike, saying it targeted a “Hamas member”.

Rescue workers and residents combed the rubble for survivors with their bare hands, under the light of hand-held torches, an AFP journalist reported.

Neighbour Fayka Abu Hatab said she “saw a bright light, then there was an explosion, and dust covered the entire area”.

“We couldn’t see anything, it all went dark,” she said.

© AFP 2025

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