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STORY: Civilian casualties continue to tick up as Israel stepped up its assault in the northern and southern parts of Gaza on Monday. Rescue crews brought in badly-wounded civilians, some of them children, to a hospital in northern Beit Lahiya. Some of the most intense fighting for weeks is raging in both the north and south. Israeli forces had gone back into Jabalia, where they’ve said they have dismantled Hamas months ago, to prevent militants regrouping there. A medical worker, Fares Afana, says they’ve tried to reach the Jabalia camp. Bodies were recovered there after overnight strikes. But he claims Israeli forces had been targeting ambulance crews, blocking them from saving wounded and trapped civilians. In southern Gaza’s Rafah, streets were near empty as Palestinians fled the fighting. Israel on Monday cut across a main highway into Rafah, closing a main crossing point for aid. The U.N. says a foreign security staff member was killed on Monday when a U.N.-marked vehicle travelling to a hospital in Rafah was struck. This marks the first international U.N. fatality in the Gaza war. Hamas' armed wing says due to Israeli bombardments it lost contact with militants guarding four Israeli hostages, including U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who appeared in a Hamas video in April. Supplies are also wearing thin for many displaced Palestinians, who’ve fled the north and south to Deir al-Balah, in the center of the Gaza strip. “There is not enough water for all displaced people, there is not enough food, not enough markets for everyone." "This water tank that you see, this was barely enough for those who were already here, it was already not enough but we were living with it, so what about those who joined us? There are people from two camps, in addition to our camp.” The U.N. says around 360,000 people have fled Rafah since Israel’s evacuation order a week ago. Many uprooted families are moving to empty tracts of land along the coast, but the U.N. warns of poor sanitary conditions there. Starving Palestinians on one side of the border – and on the other… Israeli protesters blocking aid trucks to Gaza on Monday. Some Israelis were seen spilling contents of the trucks onto a road at a West Bank checkpoint – the second such incident in less than a week. This comes even as Israel has pledged to allow uninterrupted humanitarian supplies into the besieged enclave. Washington, which has paused some deliveries of weapons to Israel, as it disagrees with an assault on Rafah, has denounced "looting" these convoys. Gaza health officials say the Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000. The conflict began after militant group Hamas burst into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages.

STORY: ::The Biden administration says it does not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza as 'genocide' ::May 13, 2024 :: Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor / White House "We believe Israel can and must do more to ensure the protection and well-being of innocent civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition." "We have paused the shipment of £2,000 bombs because we do not believe they should be dropped in densely populated cities. We are talking to the Israeli government about this. We still believe it would be a mistake to launch a major military operation into the heart of Rafah. That would put huge numbers of civilians at risk without a clear strategic gain. The president was clear that he would not supply certain offensive weapons for such an operation were it to occur." Sullivan, speaking to reporters at the White House, said the United States wants to see Hamas defeated, that Palestinians caught in the middle of the war were in "hell," and that a major military operation by Israel in Rafah would be a mistake. Biden, who is running for reelection this year, has faced heavy criticism from his own supporters domestically for his support of Israel; some of those critics have accused Israel of committing genocide. More than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died, according to Gaza health officials.