Israel faces fresh US calls against attack on Rafah

BEIRUT, Feb 16 (AFP): Israeli strikes on targets in south Lebanon killed five fighters from Hezbollah and the allied Amal movement, the groups said on Friday, adding to an uptick in violence causing international alarm.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Israeli warplanes hit five villages in southern Lebanon overnight Thursday-Friday.
A strike on one house in Al-Qantara village killed three members of the Shiite Islam Amal movement led by parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, the movement said.
Meanwhile, Israel faced renewed calls from key ally the United States on Friday against launching a large-scale attack on Gaza's southern city of Rafah, where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted he would push ahead with a "powerful" operation in the overcrowded city to achieve "complete victory" over the Hamas militant group.
The White House said US President Joe Biden had spoken by phone with Netanyahu late Thursday, urging him not to carry out an attack on Rafah without a plan to keep civilians safe.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven into Rafah, seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near the Egyptian border.
The city now hosts more than half of Gaza's population, with displaced people "crammed" into less than 20 per cent of the territory, according to UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
"We can't keep going and coming," she added. "There is no safe place for us."
Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have also urged Israel not to launch a ground offensive in the city.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Netanyahu by phone that Britain was "deeply concerned about... the potentially devastating humanitarian impact of a military incursion into Rafah," his office said.
Israeli strikes killed 112 people early Friday across the Palestinian territory, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
At least 28,663 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel's assault on the Palestinian territory, according to the health ministry.
Five die in Israeli-raided
hospital after oxygen cut
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said five patients died Friday due to lack of oxygen at one of the war-torn Palestinian territory's few operating hospitals that had been raided by Israeli forces.
"A fifth patient at Nasser hospital was martyred as a result of the stopping of generators that caused a cut in oxygen supply," the ministry said in a statement, raising fears for four other patients admitted at the hospital's intensive care unit and three children in a nursery.
Russia invites Hamas, other Palestinian factions for talks
Russia has invited Hamas and other Palestinian factions including Fatah to Moscow for talks on the Israel-Hamas war and other issues in the Middle East, an official said Friday.
Moscow, which for years tried to court good relations with all major players in the region, has grown increasingly critical of Israel and its Western backers amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Russia has invited around a dozen Palestinian groups to Moscow for "inter-Palestinian" talks from February 29, the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.
Israel PM rejects international recognition of Palestinian state
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday that he rejected a plan for international recognition of a Palestinian state, saying such an initiative "would offer an enormous reward to terrorism".
Netanyahu's comments follow a similar rejection by influential far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who responded to reports of the plan in The Washington Post.
"Israel will continue to oppose unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state," Netanyahu said in a post in Hebrew on social media platform X.