MUSCAT: The Sultanate of Oman has expressed its strong condemnation and denunciation of the persistent Israeli aggression targeting camps housing displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip’s city of Rafah.
In a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, the Sultanate of Oman urged the international community to assume its responsibilities, in an urgent manner, by taking necessary measures to stop the systematic and ongoing war crimes and genocide committed by Israeli forces against the Palestinian people.
Oman demanded the immediate implementation of UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. It also called for unhindered supply of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and the application of deterrent international sanctions on Israel in view of its criminal actions.
Meanwhile, street fighting and Israeli bombardment rocked Rafah in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, residents and officials said, a day after Israeli tanks rolled into the centre of the city near the Egyptian border.
The UN Security Council was set to meet for a second day of emergency talks after that strike ignited a fire that Gaza officials said killed 45 people and injured about 250.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was among the many leaders to voice revulsion at the bloodshed, demanding that "this horror must stop".
Israel's National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said on Wednesday the war could go on until the year's end.
But US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel needed a post-war plan "as quickly as possible".
"In the absence of a plan for the day after, there won't be a day after," he said.
Fighting has again flared in Rafah, an Israeli helicopter fired guns and missiles at targets in the city centre.
AFPTV footage showed Palestinians with bloodied midriffs and bandaged limbs after being wounded in strikes near Khan Yunis, close to Rafah, being taken to the European Hospital on makeshift gurneys.
"The rockets fell directly on us. I was hurled three metres... I don't know how I managed to get up on my feet," said one who did not give his name.
The United States has been among the countries urging Israel to refrain from a full-scale offensive into Rafah, the last Gaza city to see ground fighting, because of the risk to civilians.
However, the White House said on Tuesday that so far it had not seen Israel cross President Joe Biden's "red lines", with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby saying: "We have not seen them smash into Rafah. We have not seen them go in with large units, large numbers of troops, in columns and formations in some sort of coordinated manoeuvre against multiple targets on the ground," Kirby told a media briefing.
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