Gaza officials say Israeli attack kills health official

(NYT) — An Israeli strike killed a senior emergency services official in the Gaza Strip, local health officials said Monday, as Israel’s defense minister met with senior U.S. officials in Washington to discuss a possible new phase of the Israeli offensive.

Official Hani al-Jafarawi, head of the ambulance and emergency services in the Gaza Strip, was killed in an attack on a health clinic in Gaza City, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment. It said earlier on Monday that it had killed another man, Muhammad Salah, whom it described as a Hamas member, in Gaza City on Sunday night. It was not clear whether the two men were killed in the same attack.

According to the Health Ministry, hundreds of health workers in Gaza have been killed by Israel’s devastating bombings or caught up in ground fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s meetings with CIA Director William Burns and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Washington area on Monday coincided with a possible turn in the military campaign that Israeli officials have hinted at in recent days.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the intense phase of the war against Hamas was “nearing an end.” At the same time, he made clear that Israel would not stop fighting in the Gaza Strip until Hamas was “eliminated.”

Israeli military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi also said on Sunday that Hamas fighters were close to being defeated in Rafah, the southern Gaza city that Israel captured in May following Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7.

“We are clearly approaching the point where we can say that we have disbanded the Rafah Brigade,” Halevi said, adding that the brigade “has been defeated not in the sense that there are no more terrorists, but in the sense that it can no longer function as a fighting unit.”

In Washington, Gallant wanted to “discuss the transition to ‘Phase C’ in Gaza,” his office said. At the beginning of the war, Gallant had already drawn up a three-stage battle plan that included intensive air strikes on Hamas targets and infrastructure, a phase of ground operations aimed at “eliminating pockets of resistance,” and a third phase that would create “a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.”

On Monday, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said Blinken wanted to convey to Gallant that the United States remains committed to Israel’s security.