(Dayr Al Balaḩ) The Gaza Strip was the target of Israeli strikes overnight and during the day on Wednesday, with one destroying a house where displaced people had taken refuge in the isolated north.
Posted at 11:41 a.m.
Updated at 4:30 p.m.
Samy Magdy et Wafaa Shurafa
Associated Press
The strikes killed at least 33 people, including children, Palestinian health officials said.
An end to this war between Israel and Hamas is not in sight, even though the Jewish state has reached a ceasefire with Lebanese Hezbollah militants and attention has focused on the overthrow of Hamas. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by rebel groups.
The current and future U.S. administrations have said they hope to end the war in the Gaza Strip before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, but ceasefire talks have repeatedly stalled.
The strike on a house in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday killed 19 people in Beit Lahia, in the north of the territory, near the border with Israel, according to the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, which received the bodies. Hospital records show that a family of eight was among the victims: four children, their parents and two grandparents.
The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas militant near the hospital. She argued that reports of the number of casualties from the strike were inaccurate, without giving further details. The military says it is trying to avoid harming civilians and accuses militants of hiding among them, putting their lives at risk.
The hospital said another strike near its entrance on Wednesday killed a woman and her two children.
The director of the hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said Israeli drones also struck nearby residential buildings overnight, causing explosions that caused panic among the facility’s more than 120 sick and injured patients.
“We were receiving distress calls from neighbors and stranded people, but we are unable to leave the hospital due to the continued risk,” he said. We are witnessing a massive loss of life, with many martyrs in the targeted areas. »
Another strike, in the decades-old Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killed at least seven people, according to Al-Awda Hospital. The dead included two children, their parents and three other relatives, the hospital said. Later, the establishment said another attack hit the same Nuseirat camp, killing four people and injuring 16 others.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the other strikes.
In Lebanon, where almost daily Israeli attacks continue despite the ceasefire, at least five people died Wednesday in Israeli strikes in the south, according to the Health Ministry and the Lebanese state news agency. .
Evacuation orders after rocket attacks
Militants in the central Gaza Strip fired four projectiles into Israel on Wednesday, two of which were intercepted, the army said. The other two fell in open areas and no casualties were reported.
The army ordered the evacuation of a five-block area of the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, saying the rockets had been fired from there. The evacuation orders indicated that Israel would soon launch strikes in the area.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping around 250 people, including children and the elderly. Around a hundred hostages are still in the Gaza Strip, with at least a third dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to local health authorities. Women and children represent more than half of the deaths, but the authorities do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their reports. Israel claims to have killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Thousands of other Palestinians disappeared during the war, some after clashes with Israeli troops.
“Absolutely devastating situation”
Since the beginning of October, Israel has been leading a new offensive against Hamas militants in the north of the Gaza Strip, a heavily destroyed region. Troops surrounded Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and the Jabaliya urban refugee camp, letting almost no humanitarian aid through and ordering tens of thousands of people to flee to neighboring Gaza City.
Israeli officials said the three communities were mostly deserted, but the U.N. humanitarian office said Tuesday it believed about 65,000 to 75,000 people were still there, with limited access to the food, water, electricity or health care. Experts have warned that the north could experience famine.
Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters Tuesday that civilians trying to survive across the Gaza Strip were facing an “absolutely devastating situation.”
She highlighted the breakdown of law and order and looting that has left the UN and many humanitarian organizations unable to deliver food and other essential humanitarian goods to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need.
Mme Kaag said she and other U.N. officials repeatedly asked Israel for convoy access to the northern Gaza Strip and elsewhere, to allow the entry of commercial goods, to reopen the crossing of Rafah from Egypt, in the south, and to approve dual-use items.
Israel’s military maintains it is allowing enough humanitarian aid in and accuses U.N. agencies of failing to distribute it, saying large amounts of aid have been piling up just inside the borders from the Gaza Strip.
12-year-old killed in attack on Israeli bus
A gunman opened fire on an Israeli bus in the West Bank on Wednesday evening, killing a 12-year-old child and injuring three other people, according to the Israeli army and emergency services.
The attack took place around 11:30 p.m. south of Jerusalem, at the so-called Tunnels crossing point, between Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Hospitalized “in critical condition”, the child died during the night despite attempts at resuscitation, said the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem where he was transported.
