Israeli military strikes killed at least 23 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, most of them in the town of Beit Lahiya on the northern edge, medics said, as the army issued new evacuation orders in the south of the small enclave.
Medics said eight people had been killed in a series of air strikes in Beit Lahiya while four others were killed elsewhere in Gaza City.
An Israeli air strike later killed two people and wounded others in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, in the coastal enclave’s north, medics said.
Another air attack, on Al-Falah School sheltering displaced families in Gaza City’s Zeitoun suburb, killed six people and wounded others, medics said, while in Rafah in the far south, three women were killed by Israeli drone fire, they added.
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The Israeli army has been operating in Jabalia and also in the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun since October. Israeli forces have killed hundreds of militants in the three locations since the operation began, the army has said.
The army says it is targeting regrouping Hamas-led militants who often use civilian buildings including schools and hospitals for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminate bombardments.
Hamas and its smaller ally Islamic Jihad have said their fighters have killed several Israeli soldiers in guerrilla-style ambushes since October.
Palestinians have accused Israel’s army of trying to drive people from the northern edge of Gaza with forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone. The army denies this, saying it has returned there to prevent Hamas fighters from renewing operations in an area from which they had been cleared.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said its operations in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun had now been halted for nearly four weeks due to Israeli attacks on their teams as well as fuel shortages.
It said 88 members of the Civil Emergency Service had been killed, 304 wounded and 21 detained by Israel since the war began in October 2023.
The Israeli army issued evacuation orders on Tuesday to residents in northern districts of Khan Younis, a city in south Gaza, citing the firing of rockets by militants from those areas. The orders, the latest of many, prompted the hurried exodus of families, mostly before dawn, in a westerly direction.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the enclave. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been internally displaced, some as many as 10 times in all.
Israel launched its campaign in the densely populated enclave after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities across the border on October 7th, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military campaign has since killed more than 44,400 Palestinians, injured many others, and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Israel threatened to return to war in Lebanon if its truce with Hizbullah collapses, and said this time its attacks would go deeper and target the Lebanese state itself, after the deadliest day since the ceasefire was agreed last week.
In its strongest threat since the truce was agreed to end 14 months of war with Hizbullah, Israel said it would hold Lebanon responsible for failing to disarm militants who violate the ceasefire.
“If we return to war we will act strongly, we will go deeper, and the most important thing they need to know: that there will be no longer be an exemption for the state of Lebanon,” defence minister Israel Katz said.
“If until now we separated the state of Lebanon from Hizbullah ... it will no longer be [like this],” he said.
Despite last week’s truce, Israeli forces have continued strikes against what they say are Hizbullah fighters ignoring the agreement to halt attacks and withdraw beyond the Litani river, about 30km from the frontier.
On Monday, Hizbullah shelled an Israeli military post, while Lebanese authorities said at least 12 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Lebanon. Another person was killed on Tuesday by a drone strike, Lebanon said.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said any infraction of the truce would be punished, however small.
“We are enforcing this ceasefire with an iron fist,” he said ahead of a cabinet meeting in the northern border city of Nahariya. “We are currently in a ceasefire, I note, a ceasefire, not the end of the war,” he added.
Top Lebanese officials urged Washington and Paris to press Israel to uphold the ceasefire, after dozens of military operations on Lebanese soil that Beirut has deemed violations, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
The truce came into effect on November 27th and prohibits Israel from conducting offensive military operations in Lebanon, while requiring Lebanon to prevent armed groups including Hizbullah from launching attacks on Israel. It gives Israeli troops 60 days to withdraw from south Lebanon. – Reuters