DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike on the courtyard of a hospital in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and ignited a fire that swept through a human tent camp. displaced by the warAccording to Palestinian medics, more than twenty people were left with serious burns.
The Israeli military said it was targeting militants hiding among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months, it has repeatedly attacked crowded shelters and tent camps, claiming Hamas fighters were using them as a base for attacks.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded after an earlier attack on a school-turned-shelter, which killed at least 20 people when the airstrike in the struck and fired early in the morning. engulfed many of the tents.
Several secondary explosions were heard after the initial attack, but it was not immediately clear whether these were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.
Associated Press images show children among the injured. A man cried while carrying a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg received a blood transfusion on the floor of the crowded hospital.
Hospital records showed four people were killed and 40 injured. According to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, 25 people were taken to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering serious burns.
Israel continues to carry out almost daily attacks in the Gaza Strip more than a year after the war, and is conducting a major ground assault in the north where it says militants have regrouped.
The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants kidnapped about 250 hostages. About a hundred people are still being held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed dead.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to the Israeli Health Ministry. The Health Ministry did not say how many fighters there were, but said women and children made up more than half of the fatalities. About 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced by the war. often several timesand large parts of the coastal area are completely destroyed.
Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate south and has not allowed food into the north since the beginning of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north obeyed Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and were not allowed to return.
That has created fear among Palestinians that Israel wants to implement this a plan devised by former generals in which it would expel all civilians from northern Gaza and label anyone who remained there as fighters – a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law.
The plan was presented to the Israeli government, but it is unclear whether it was adopted. The military says it has received no such orders.
Israeli rights groups on Monday called on the international community to prevent Israel from implementing the plan, saying there are “alarming signs” that Israel is starting to implement it.
The statement, signed by B’Tselem, Gisha, Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, warned that states “have a duty to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer.”
With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally that has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to attack Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack, raising the prospect of all-out war across the region.
A Hezbollah airstrike on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers – all 19 years old – and seriously injured seven others, the army said on Sunday. This is the militant group’s deadliest attack since Israel nearly launched its ground invasion of Lebanon. two weeks ago.
Hezbollah called the attack near the town of Binyamina a retaliation Israeli attacks on Beirut 22 people were killed on Thursday. It said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani Brigade, launching dozens of missiles to target Israeli air defense systems during the drone attack.
Israel’s National Rescue Service said 61 people were injured in the attack. It is rare for so many people to be injured by drones or missiles, most of which are intercepted by Israel’s multi-layered air defenses or fall in open areas.