Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the war resumed in Qatar.
Israeli strikes in the north of 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 Hamas-controlled 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.
Israel says its forces have returned to northern Gaza more than a year into the war with Hamas to root out the militant group’s fighters who had regrouped there. It said on Friday that three of its soldiers were killed in combat in the north of the enclave.
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The Israeli military said in a statement it has “eliminated over 40 terrorists” in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantling infrastructure and locating “large quantities of military equipment”.
Officials say some 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed assault on northern Gaza launched by the Israeli military at the start of October.
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 weeklong holiday, and it took place outside a military base near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
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 Binyamin 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 prime minister for the failures that led to the attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home remaining hostages.
Israel’s air strikes “hit hard” Iran’s defences and missile production, Mr Netanyahu said on Sunday, but Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the damage from Saturday’s attack should not be exaggerated.
Iran’s leader has said “it would be wrong to say the Israeli attack did not matter” in the wake of Israel’s air strikes on Iran this weekend.
However, the ayatollah, making his first public comments since the Israeli air strikes, stopped short of calling for retaliation.
Iran reserves the right to respond to Israel’s “criminal aggression”, foreign minister Abbas Araqchi told the United Nations secretary general in a letter calling for an urgent UN Security Council meeting, Iran’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.
The Israeli attacks involved waves of IDF fighter jets and drones targeting military sites across the country, the New York Times reports.
Saturday’s attack focused on air defence, radar sites, and long-range missile production facilities and marked the first time Israel has openly attacked Iran after decades of shadow warfare. Four soldiers were killed, Iranian media said.
Mr Netanyahu’s office denied a report that Israel initially planned to strike Iran’s oil and natural gas facilities, but changed its plan to focus on Iranian military targets after pressure from the US.
With warfare raging in Gaza and Lebanon, direct confrontation between Israel and Iran risks spiralling into a regional conflagration. But a day after the air strikes, there was no sign they would spark another round of escalation.
However, heavy fighting in Lebanon between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hizbullah, which sharply intensified over recent weeks, continued on Sunday with an Israeli air strike killing eight people in a residential block in Sidon, medics said.
The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency will meet Qatar’s prime minister on Sunday in Doha, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.
The negotiations will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, the official said.
The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire. – Agencies