Israeli military strikes in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis have killed at least 38 people since last night and Israeli forces launched a night time raid on a hospital in the north, Palestinian officials said.
The Gaza health ministry said many of the casualties from the Israeli strikes on houses in southeast Khan Younis were women and children.
The Israeli military said in a statement forces killed a number of Palestinian gunmen in air and ground strikes in southern Gaza and dismantled military infrastructure.
Some residents returned to the scene, sifting through rubble in an attempt to retrieve some of their clothes and documents, while children looked for their toys.
At the nearby Nasser Hospital, medics prepared the dead, among them three children wrapped in the same white shroud.
In the north of the enclave, where the area around the town of Jabalia has been the target of a weeks-long offensive, health officials said Israeli forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities struggling to operate there and stationed forces outside it.
“Since last night, at midnight, the occupation army tanks and bulldozers reached the hospital,” Eid Sabbah, the hospital’s director of nursing, said in a voice note to Reuters.
“The terrorising of civilians, the injured and children began as they (the Israeli army) started opening fire on the hospital,” Mr Sabbah added.
He said when army retreated, a delegation from the World Health Organization arrived with an ambulance and evacuated 40 patients.
Israeli tanks returned and opened fire on the hospital, striking its oxygen stores, before raiding the building and ordering staff and patients to leave, Mr Sabbah said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military or WHO on the hospital raid.
Israeli strikes on three houses in the nearby Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed 25 people and wounded dozens of others, medics said.
Medics at the three hospitals have refused Israeli orders to evacuate their hospitals and leave patients unattended.
They said at least 800 Palestinians have been killed in northern Gaza since the army began the new offensive three weeks ago.
“IDF troops continue their operational activity in the area of Jabaliya and have eliminated dozens of terrorists, dismantled terrorist infrastructure and located numerous weapons over the past day,” the Israeli military said.
Israel said its forces returned to northern Gaza as Hamas militants had regrouped there.
New ceasefire push
The escalation came as the United States pushed for a new effort to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, that would end the war and see the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held captive in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed by Israel.
A Hamas official confirmed to Reuters that a delegation led by the group’s chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya arrived in Cairo yesterday for talks with Egyptian officials to discuss “ways to end the Israeli aggression on Gaza”.
The official said Hamas was determined any agreement must end the war in Gaza, get Israeli forces out of the enclave and achieve a prisoners and hostages exchange deal.
US and Israeli negotiators will gather in Doha in the coming days to try to restart talks toward a deal, officials said.
Israel is also fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Qatar and Egypt have acted as mediators between Israel and Hamas in months of talks that broke down in August without an agreement to end the war that erupted when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
As the war moves into its second year, the death toll from the Israeli campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.
The operation in northern Gaza has fuelled fears among Palestinians that Israeli forces are clearing the area in order to create a buffer zone for the military after the war or to pave the way for the return of settlers who left Gaza in 2005.
Israel has denied such plans and accuses Hamas of hindering the evacuation of civilians to provide cover for its own forces, which Hamas, in turn, denies.
Meanwhile, UN agencies have said that children in Gaza are dying in pain for want of emergency treatment as a result of Israeli authorities approving fewer and fewer of them for medical evacuation following the closure of the Rafah crossing.
Whereas before, almost 300 children were being evacuated a month, that number had now declined to less than one per day, with authorities waiting in vain for security approvals from Israeli authorities controlling exits from Gaza, UNICEF’s James Elder told a United Nations briefing in Geneva.
“As a result, children in Gaza are dying, not just from the bombs and the bullets and the shells that strike them,” he said.
“Even when miracles happen, even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount but the child survives, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza for the urgent medical care that can save their lives,” he added.
Israeli authorities did not say when an application for a medical evacuation had been declined, and no explanation was given for any decision taken.
Separately, Israel’s military has said it killed a Hamas commander who took part in the 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel and also worked for the UN aid agency in Gaza.
The agency, UNRWA, has been accused by Israel of having many employees who are also members of Hamas and other armed groups.
The UN, after an investigation, said in August that nine UNRWA staff were possibly involved in the 7 October attacks and fired them.
The Israeli military said Mohammad Abu Itiwi was killed on Wednesday. It said he was a Hamas commander and had been involved in the murder and abduction of Israeli civilians.
It also said he had been employed by UNRWA since July 2022 and that his name appeared on a list of the agency’s employees.
UNRWA confirmed Itiwi was a staff member and was killed on Wednesday. It said Itiwi’s name was included in a letter UNRWA received from Israel in July that included a list of 100 staff members who were also allegedly members of armed groups, including Hamas.
“The UNRWA commissioner general responded to that letter immediately stating that any allegation is taken seriously. He urged (the government of Israel) to cooperate with the agency by providing more information so he could take action. To date, UNRWA has not received any response to that letter,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications.
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UNRWA provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
It has long had tense relations with Israel but relations have deteriorated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza and Israel has called repeatedly for UNRWA to be disbanded.
“Israel has requested urgent clarifications from senior UN officials and an urgent investigation into the involvement of UNRWA employees in the 7 October massacre,” said Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
The Hamas attack on southern Israel last year killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 250 being abducted, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s Gaza offensive has killed nearly 43,000 people, according to Gaza authorities, and laid waste to the territory.