Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 22 people, most of them women and children, as the offensive into the isolated area entered a third week.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 11 women and two children were among those killed in the strikes late on Saturday in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
It said another 15 people were injured.
In a separate development, a truck rammed into a bus stop near Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring more than 30.
The attack in Ramat Hasharon occurred as Israelis were returning to work after a week-long holiday, and it took place outside a military base near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Israeli police said the attacker was an Arab citizen of Israel.
Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the attack but did not say they were behind it.
The Israeli military said there was another attack near a checkpoint in the West Bank, in which a suspect tried to ram soldiers with his vehicle and then tried to stab them before being killed. No soldiers were injured, it added.
Later on Sunday, protesters disrupted a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a nationally broadcast ceremony remembering the victims of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel last year.
People shouted “Shame on you” and made a commotion, forcing Mr Netanyahu to stop his speech. Many Israelis blame their PM for the failures that led to the attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home remaining hostages.
In Beit Lahiya, the Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike on militants in a structure and took steps to avoid harming civilians. It disputed what it said were “numbers published by the media”.
Israel has been waging an air and ground offensive in northern Gaza for the last three weeks after saying Hamas militants had regrouped there.
Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the year-long war.
The civil defence first responders service operating under the Hamas-run government in Gaza said it had recovered a number of bodies following an Israeli air strike on Sunday on a school in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City.
Aid groups have warned of a catastrophic situation in northern Gaza, which was the first target of Israel’s ground offensive and suffered the heaviest destruction of the war. Israel has severely limited the entry of basic humanitarian aid in recent weeks, and the three remaining hospitals in the north – one raided over the weekend – say they have been overwhelmed by waves of injured.
The UN secretary-general, in a statement by his spokesperson, accused Israeli authorities of denying most aid deliveries of food and medicine amid “harrowing levels of death”.
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday said Israeli evacuation orders and restrictions on the entry of essential supplies had left the civilian population in “horrific circumstances”.
On Saturday, Israeli warplanes attacked Iran – which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah – in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.
The cascading conflicts have raised fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which also include the Houthi rebels in Yemen and armed groups in Syria and Iraq.
Israel says its strikes on Gaza only target militants and it blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants fight in densely populated areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s border wall and stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack on October 2023. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the local Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half of those killed were women and children.
The offensive has devastated much of the impoverished coastal territory and displaced around 90% of its population, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have crowded into squalid tent camps along the coast, and aid groups say hunger is rampant.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
