DEIR AL-BALA, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 60 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes Southern and central Gaza Some of the attacks occurred overnight and into Tuesday in Israeli-declared “safe zones” crowded with thousands of displaced people.
Air strikes in recent days have continued to kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, even as Israel has withdrawn or scaled back major ground attacks in the north and south of the Strip. Near-daily air strikes have hit a “safe zone” covering about 60 square kilometers (23 square miles) of the Mediterranean coast, and Israel has told Palestinians fleeing the ground attacks to seek refuge. Israel says it is pursuing Hamas fighters hiding among civilians after attacks uprooted a network of underground tunnels.
Tuesday’s deadliest attack hit a main street lined with market stalls on the outskirts of the southern city of Khan Yunis in Mwasi, the center of a densely populated region of tent camps. An official at Khan Yunis’ Nasser Hospital said 17 people were killed.
The Israeli army said in a statement that the target was the commander of Islamic Jihad’s naval unit in the western town of Khan Yunis, apparently referring to the attack, and that it was investigating reports that civilians had been killed.
The attack took place about one kilometre (0.6 mile) from a compound Israel struck on Saturday in what it said was targeting Hamas’ top military commander. Mohammed DeifThe explosion occurred in an area surrounded by tents. More than 90 Palestinians, including children, Gaza health officials said it was not yet clear whether Deif died in the attack.
The new airstrikes come as talks between Israel and Hamas continue. Latest ceasefire proposalHamas said the talks were intended to end nine months of war. Will continueFollowing the Israeli attack on Deif, international mediators are urging Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement to stop fighting and release about 120 hostages being held by the militant group in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces have been forced to launch repeated new offensives to battle Hamas fighters who they say are regrouping in parts of the Gaza Strip they previously invaded, but they seem increasingly confident that they have dealt serious blows to the militants’ organizations and infrastructure in the nine-month operation.
The army said on Tuesday it had wiped out half of Hamas’ military leadership and killed or captured about 14,000 fighters. It said it had killed six brigade commanders, more than 20 battalion commanders and about 150 company commanders from Hamas’ side, and had struck 37,000 targets in the Gaza Strip during the war, including more than 25,000 terrorist facilities and launch sites.
These figures could not be independently verified.
Israel’s ground operations have focused on the northern and southern Gaza cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, where it says it has destroyed an extensive Hamas tunnel network. The attacks have destroyed entire neighborhoods. While ground operations continue in Rafah, airstrikes appear to be hitting hard in areas of the central and coastal “safe zones” that were not affected by previous attacks.
Airstrikes late Monday night and into Tuesday hit the Nuseirat and Zawayda refugee camps in central Gaza. Officials at Al-Aqsa Hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah said airstrikes on four homes killed at least 24 people, including 10 women and four children.
Another blast struck the United Nations school in Nuseira, where families had taken refuge, killing at least nine people. Associated Press footage showed the school’s yard strewn with rubble and twisted metal from bombed-out buildings. Workers carried away bodies wrapped in blankets as women and children looked on from the classrooms where they had been living.
The Israeli military said Hamas fighters were planning the attack from the school, but the claim could not be independently verified.
Separate airstrikes in Khan Yunis and Rafah killed 12 people, according to medical sources and an Associated Press journalist, who counted the bodies at the hospital before a funeral was held outside the hospital’s gates.
The military said its planes had struck around 40 targets in the Gaza Strip in the past day, including guard posts, Hamas military installations and buildings containing explosives. Israel has said it bears responsibility for civilian casualties because it operates in densely populated areas.
The Israeli army announced on Tuesday that it would begin sending out conscription notices. Next week, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man The move could destabilize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and spark even larger protests within the Jewish community. A long-standing political arrangement has exempted ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from military service, which is mandatory for most Jewish men. The exemption has drawn public outrage in Israel.
The war in Gaza, which began with an Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,600 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has wreaked a humanitarian disaster in the coastal Palestinian territories, displacing most of the region’s 2.3 million residents and sparking widespread famine.
Hamas’ October offensive killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and the militants took about 250 hostages. Israeli officials say about 120 people remain in captivity, about a third of whom are believed to have died.
Violence has also spiked in the West Bank, where on Tuesday a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli police officer, slightly wounding him, before another officer opened fire, killing the assailant, a 19-year-old from Gaza.
___
For more from AP, see below. https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
