Strikes on Gaza kill 12 and stabbing in Israel kills 2 as fears of wider war spike
In Gaza, an Israeli strike earlier on Sunday hit a tent camp housing displaced people in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing four people, including one woman, and injuring others, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
An Associated Press journalist filmed men rushing to the scene to help the wounded and retrieve bodies, while trying to extinguish the fire.
The hospital in Deir al-Balah is the main medical facility operating in central Gaza, and thousands of people have taken shelter there after fleeing their homes in the war-ravaged territory.
A separate strike flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and their grandmother, according to the ministry.
An Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City on Saturday killed at least 16 people and wounded another 21, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which announced the toll on Sunday. Israel’s military, which regularly accuses Palestinian militants of sheltering in civilian areas, said it struck a Hamas command center.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians, but the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. Gaza’s Health Ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its tallies.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 people hostage in their surprise attack into southern Israel last October.
Israel’s massive offensive launched in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were militants. 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 traded fire with Israel along the Lebanon border since the start of the war, in what the militant group says is aimed at relieving pressure on its fellow Iran-backed ally, Hamas. The continuous strikes and counterstrikes have grown in severity in recent months, raising fears of an even more destructive regional war.
Over 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
