Tel Aviv: Israeli strikes early Sunday killed 18 people in Gaza, including four who were sheltering in a tent camp for Palestinian refugees inside a hospital complex, while a knife attack by a Palestinian wounded two. Killed in the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Tensions have risen after nearly 10 months of fighting in Gaza and the killing of two senior militants in separate attacks in Lebanon and Iran last week. The killings prompted threats of retaliation from Iran and its allies and raised fears of an even more destructive regional war.
According to Israel's Magen David Edom Rescue Service and a nearby hospital, a 70-year-old woman and an 80-year-old man were stabbed to death and two other men were wounded in the attack. Police said the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant who was “neutralized”.
Rescuers said the injured were found in three different locations, each about 500 meters apart. Police initially said they were looking for other suspects but later ruled out more than one attacker.
Israel is bracing for revenge after a top Hezbollah commander was killed in an attack in Lebanon and the political leader of Hamas was killed in an attack last week in the Iranian capital. Both targeted killings were linked to the ongoing war in Gaza, which began with a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
The Ministry of Health of Gaza announced that in Gaza, the Israeli attack early Sunday attacked a Palestinian refugee tent camp in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing four people, including a woman, and injuring a number of others.
An Associated Press reporter filmed men rushing to the scene to help the injured and remove bodies as they tried to put out the fire.
The Israeli army announced that it targeted a Palestinian militia in the attack, which it said secondary explosions “indicate the presence of weapons in the area”.
Deir al-Balah Hospital is the main medical facility operating in central Gaza, where thousands of people have taken refuge after fleeing their homes in the war-torn area. A separate attack on a house near Deir al-Balah killed a girl and her parents, the hospital said.
Another attack flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and a grandmother, the ministry said. According to Civil Defense, three more people were killed in an attack on a car in Gaza City.
Palestinian militants in Gaza fired at least five projectiles at Israeli communities near the border, without causing any casualties or damage, the Israeli military said.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which announced the casualties on Sunday, at least 16 people were killed and 21 others were injured in an attack by the Zionist regime on a school that turned into a shelter in Gaza City. The Israeli military, which regularly accuses Palestinian militants of sheltering civilian areas, said it had targeted a Hamas command center.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians, but the military rarely comments on individual attacks that often kill women and children. The Gaza Ministry of Health does not distinguish between civilians and militias in its statistics.
Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages in a surprise attack on southern Israel last October.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel's massive attack on Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians. Heavy airstrikes and ground operations have caused widespread destruction and displaced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Hezbollah has regularly opened fire along the Lebanese border with Israel since the war began, in what the militant group says is aimed at easing pressure on its Iran-backed ally Hamas. Continued strikes and counter-attacks have intensified in recent months, raising fears of a more destructive regional war.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, since the beginning of the Gaza war, more than 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank. Most of them have been killed during Israeli attacks and violent protests. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, and the Palestinians want all three lands for their future state.
