Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered full US backing for Israel in person, on a solidarity visit in which he blamed Islamist militants for a deadly rocket strike on a Gaza hospital and announced the resumption of urgent aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The US president's whistlestop trip came just hours after Tuesday night's blast at the Ahli Arab hospital in the Gaza Strip, sparking fury in Arab countries which blame Israel and protests in Muslim countries from Egypt to Pakistan. Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for a "day of rage", after its ally Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, said 471 people were killed in the blast on the hospital compound, where many displaced by Israeli bombing were sheltering.
But European intelligence agencies cast doubt on the death toll. One told AFP: "There wasn't 200 or even 500 deaths, more likely between 10 and 50." The official also backed Biden and the Israelis' account, who said the strike at the Christian-run hospital was from a malfunctioning Palestinian rocket. In Tel Aviv, Biden said he was "deeply saddened and outraged" by the blast, but added: "Based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you."
Israel, Washington's long-standing key Middle East ally, has blamed the armed Islamic Jihad movement which like Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist group by the United States and other Western governments.
"Based on the information we have seen today it (the blast) appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza," Biden told a news conference later.
Biden has defended Israel's right to defend itself, and understood the "all-consuming rage" to hit back at those responsible for the October 7 attacks, which saw Hamas fighters shoot, mutilate or burn to death some 1,400 people. But he added: "I caution this while you feel that rage: don't be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice we also made mistakes," he said. Israel said afterwards it had agreed to Biden's request to allow aid into the besieged Gaza Strip via Egypt after mounting concern about dwindling supplies and warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe.
But it said it was limited to "food, water and medicine" and conditional on it not being used by Hamas, added Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.
Biden also announced plans for "unprecedented" aid for Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as part of a wider $100 billion package that includes support for Ukraine. Another report adds from Gaza Strip: US President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled a deal to allow desperately-needed humanitarian aid to enter worn-torn Gaza, where one million people have fled their homes amid withering Israeli air strikes.
After face-to-face talks in Israel and intense telephone diplomacy with Egypt, Biden said a limited number of trucks would be allowed to cross the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza from Friday.
It would be the first international relief to enter Gaza since October 7,
when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched shock raids into Israel, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing about 200 hostages.
Since then, Israel has besieged the Palestinian enclave, launching wave after wave of air strikes, enforcing a blockade and deploying tens of thousands of troops to the border in preparation for an expected ground assault.
The United Nations and humanitarian groups have begged for the military stranglehold on Gaza to be eased, to allow supplies of water, food, fuel and medicines to enter.
Top UN humanitarian official Martin Griffiths on Wednesday said the situation in Gaza was dire, with hospitals overwhelmed, more than 3,000 Gazans killed and 12,500 injured.
"The pace of death, of suffering, of destruction" he said "cannot be exaggerated."
Despite the devastation, more than 100 trucks have been queued for days on the Egyptian side of the border waiting to enter Gaza.
