Netanyahu says Israel won't stop its attempt to destroy Hamas, as Gaza war nears 100th day

Israel kept up bombardments in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, vowing to press ahead with its offensive to destroy the Islamist movement Hamas as the war approaches the 100-day mark with no end in sight.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not be deterred by a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where it is fighting accusations that the campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide.

"No one will stop us — not The Hague, not the Axis of Evil, no one," he told a news conference, referring to Hamas and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Houthi militias that have offered their support.

More than three months after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war, more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed and Gaza is a wasteland of rubble, with most of its 2.3 million population squeezed into a tiny corner at the southern end of the Hamas-run enclave.

In the southern city of Rafah, an Israeli airstrike on a house sheltering two displaced families killed 10 people, the Health Ministry in Gaza said.

Holding up a photo of a dead girl with a piece of bread in her hand, Bassem Arafeh, a relative, said the families in Rafah had been eating dinner when the house was struck on Friday night.

"This child died while she was hungry, while she was eating a piece of bread with nothing on it," Arafeh said.

Israel says it targets militants and does all it can to minimize harm to non-combatants as it wages urban warfare against Hamas in the densely populated Palestinian enclave.

But the scale of the killing in Gaza and the dire humanitarian situation has shocked world opinion and fuelled growing calls for a ceasefire, with South Africa launching the case before the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide.

Israel has rejected the accusation as a gross distortion, saying its actions in Gaza have been taken in self-defence after Hamas gunmen attacked a string of communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and taking some 240 as hostages.

It says the attack, which Hamas leaders have said they would carry out again, showed its existence as a state under threat unless the movement is destroyed.

The Israeli military, which says it has killed more than 8,000 fighters, has announced a new phase in combat, withdrawing some forces from northern Gaza while maintaining operations in the south, where senior Hamas leaders including the movement's leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, are believed to be hiding.

Since the start of Israel's ground operation in late October, 187 Israeli soldiers have been killed and another 1,099 injured in Gaza, according to the military.

Fighting in south, central Gaza

The Israeli military said on Saturday its forces had killed numerous militants in the southern area of Khan Younis and in the central Gaza Strip. It said it was looking into the reported strike in Rafah. Hamas said its fighters fired at an Israeli helicopter in Khan Younis.

In the central Gaza Strip, residents reported intense gun battles and tank shelling, and Israeli airstrikes in Al-Bureij, Al-Nusseirat and Al-Maghazi.

The Israeli military said it targeted militants and a Hamas command centre in those areas. Israeli forces were also seen on the edge of Deir al-Balah, a town to the west where Israel had been urging residents to shelter.

More than 20 fatalities were reported in northern Gaza, Beit Lahiya and in the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City.

Far away from where the war was raging, thousands of demonstrators marched in central London on Saturday, as part of a global day of action against the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Palestinians in 75 years.

The London march was one of several being held in European cities, including in Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin. In Washington, D.C., thousands of demonstrators converged opposite the White House.

Ashraf Al-Qidra, a Health Ministry spokesperson in Gaza, said Israeli strikes killed 135 Palestinians and wounded 312 in the past 24 hours. In total, he said, 23,843 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since Oct. 7.

As the fighting continued, the head of UNWRA, the United Nations aid agency for Palestinians, said the death and destruction over the past 100 days were "staining our shared humanity."

At Gaza's Nasser Hospital, a handful of doctors said they were struggling in a now "collapsed" health-care system.

"Most of the medical supplies in the ICU are missing," said physician Mohammad Al-Qidra. "We don't have empty beds, no treatments. Most of the medicines inside the emergency room are not enough for patients. We are trying to find alternatives."

Hospital wards are being shared by many of the displaced.

"When we ask for medicine, they tell us they don't have it, and the situation is bad. We are here in cold and windy weather," said Mahmoud Jaber, who has been displaced from his home in Gaza City.

'The reality is more difficult'

Most of Gaza's population of 2.3 million has been displaced.

"Sheik Zayed City was one of the beautiful cities of Gaza before the war, it used to house thousands of people, but it is now destroyed," said Mahmoud Salama, a freelance Palestinian journalist touring the northern town after Israeli tanks had retreated. "The reality is more difficult than the footage."

In the occupied West Bank, where violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinians had already been on the rise before Oct. 7 and has increased since, three Palestinians who were armed with knives, a rifle and an axe tried to break into a Jewish settlement and were killed, the Israeli military said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the dead were aged 15, 17 and 19. An Israeli soldier was wounded in an exchange of fire with the assailants as they breached the outer fence of the settlement Adora, near the Palestinian city Hebron, Israel said.