By Wafaa Shurafa, DEIR
AL-BALAH Gaza Strip
Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, including one that struck an Israeli-declared “safe zone” crowded with thousands of displaced people.
Airstrikes in recent days have
brought a constant drumbeat of deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, even
as Israel has pulled back or scaled down major ground offensives in the north
and south. Almost daily strikes have hit the “safe zone” covering some 60
square kilometers (23 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast, where Israel
told fleeing Palestinians to take refuge to escape ground assaults. Israel has
said it is pursuing Hamas militants who are hiding among civilians after
offensives uprooted underground tunnel networks.
Tuesday’s deadliest strike hit
a main street lined with market stalls outside the southern city of Khan Younis
in Muwasi, at the heart of the zone that is packed with tent camps. Officials
at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital said 17 people were killed.
Apparently referring to the
strike, the Israeli military said in a statement that it targeted a commander
in Islamic Jihad’s naval unit west of Khan Younis. It said it was looking into
reports that civilians were killed.
The attack hit about a
kilometer (0.6 miles) from a compound that Israel struck on Saturday, saying it
was targeting Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammed
Deif. That blast, in an area also surrounded by tents, killed more
than 90 Palestinians, including children, according to Gaza health
officials. It is still not known if Deif was killed in the strike.
The new airstrikes came as
Israel and Hamas continued to weigh the
latest cease-fire proposal. Hamas has said talks meant to wind down the
nine-month-long war would
continue, even after Israel targeted Deif. International mediators are
working to push Israel and Hamas toward a deal that would halt the fighting and
free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.
Israeli forces have repeatedly
had to launch new offensives to combat Hamas fighters they say have been
regrouping in parts of Gaza that the military has previously invaded. Still,
the military has sounded increasingly confident that it has severely damaged
the militants’ organization and infrastructure in its 9-month-old campaign.
The military said Tuesday that
it has eliminated half of the leadership of Hamas’ military wing and that some
14,000 militants have been killed or detained. It said it killed six brigade
commanders, over 20 battalion commanders, and approximately 150 company
commanders from Hamas’ ranks, and that over the course of the war, it has hit
37,000 targets from the air within the Gaza Strip, including more than 25,000
terrorist infrastructure and launch sites.
The figures could not be
independently confirmed.
Israel’s ground campaigns have
focused on northern Gaza and the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah,
where it says it has destroyed extensive Hamas tunnel networks. The offensives
have left entire neighborhoods flattened. While ground operations continue in
Rafah, airstrikes now appear to be hitting heavily in the areas untouched by
previous offensives in the center and the coastal “safe zone.”
Strikes late Monday and on
Tuesday hit the Nuseirat and Zawaida refugee camps in central Gaza. Strikes on
four houses killed at least 24 people, including 10 women and four children,
according to officials at Al Aqsa hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah.
Another hit a U.N. school in
Nuseirat where families were sheltering, killing at least nine people. AP
footage showed the school’s yard covered in rubble and twisted metal from a
structure that was hit. Workers carried bodies wrapped in blankets, as women
and children watched from the classrooms where they have been living.
Israel’s military said Hamas
militants were operating from the school to plan attacks. Its claim could not
be independently confirmed.
Other strikes in Khan Younis
and Rafah killed 12 people, according to medical officials and AP journalists.
An AP journalist counted the bodies at the hospital before a funeral was held
at its gates.
The military said air force
planes struck some 40 targets in Gaza over the past day, among them observation
posts, Hamas military structures and explosives-rigged buildings. Israel blames
Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants operate in densely
populated areas.
The Israeli military said
Tuesday that it would begin sending draft notices to
Jewish ultra-Orthodox men next week — a step that could destabilize
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and trigger more large protests
in the community. Under long-standing political arrangements, ultra-Orthodox
men had been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men —
an exemption that created resentment among the general public in Israel.
The war in Gaza, which was
sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,600
people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not
distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created
a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most
of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.
Hamas’ October attack killed
1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostage. About 120
remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according
to Israeli authorities.
Violence has also surged in
the West Bank. On Tuesday a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli policeman, wounding
him lightly, before another officer opened fire, killing the assailant who was
identified as a 19-year-old from Gaza.
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