Dozens killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza: health ministry

Palestinian Territories – AFP

Israeli strikes killed dozens more people overnight, the health ministry in Gaza said Thursday, including in the territory’s south where Israel has intensified operations.

The renewed strikes came as medicine for Israelis held by the Palestinian resistance groups and fresh aid for civilians entered the Palestinian territory under a newly brokered deal, mediator Qatar said.

The ministry said 93 people had been killed, including 16 in a single strike on a house in the southern city of Rafah, where many people have fled.

“The strike left 16 killed, among them women and children, and 20 injured,” the ministry said.

The Hamas government reported dozens of strikes, including on the southern city of Khan Yunis and Palestinian refugee camps in central Gaza.

Plumes of black smoke rose over Khan Yunis at dawn after the strikes.

Israeli attacks have ravaged the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel that resulted in the death of about 1,140 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

At least 24,448 Palestinians, most of them women, children and adolescents, have been killed in Israeli bombardments and a ground offensive, according to figures from the health ministry.

Palestinian fighters took about 250 people prisoners during the October 7 attack, and around 132 remain in Gaza.

A broader humanitarian crisis in besieged Gaza is marked by the threat of famine and disease, fuelling international calls for a ceasefire.

Late Wednesday Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said on X, formerly Twitter, that medicine for Israeli prisoners and aid entered Gaza “over the past few hours” under the agreement announced on Tuesday following French and Qatari mediation.

Two planes earlier arrived in the Egyptian city of El-Arish near the Gaza border with 61 tonnes of aid provided by Doha and France, including medicine and food, Qatar said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross welcomed the deal as “a much-needed moment of relief”.

– ‘Our life is gone’ –

At the Abu Yussef Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, Palestinians stood in front of bodies wrapped in shrouds, mourning loved ones killed in Israeli bombardment.

Hassan Gebril Franjee, a resident of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, returned to find his home had been destroyed.

“I wish they would stop the war because the situation is devastating. Our youth is gone. Our whole life is gone,” he told AFP.

The United Nations says the war has displaced roughly 85 percent of Gaza’s people, many of whom have crowded into shelters and struggle to get food, water, fuel and medical care.

– West Bank violence –

Since October 7, Israeli army raids and attacks by settlers in West Bank have killed around 360 people in the territory, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Israeli forces killed 10 people in the West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry and the Israeli army said.

Five were killed inside Tulkarem refugee camp, according to the ministry, while Israel’s military confirmed an air strike that killed “a number of terrorists” during a raid there.

Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, said five of its fighters died east of the city of Nablus.