Israeli air strikes have killed 18 people in Gaza, including four who were sheltering at a camp housing displaced people inside a hospital complex, while a stabbing attack carried out by a Palestinian killed two people in a Tel Aviv suburb.
Tensions have soared following nearly 10 months of war in Gaza and the killing of two senior militants in separate strikes in Lebanon and Iran last week. Those killings brought threats of revenge from Iran and its allies and raised fears of an even more destructive regional war.
A woman (70s) and a man (80s) were killed in the stabbing attack, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service and a nearby hospital, and two other men were injured.
Police said the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant, who was “neutralised”, and a search was launched for other potential suspects. They later ruled out the possibility that anyone else was involved.
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Israel has been bracing for retaliation after the killing of a senior Hizbullah commander in a strike in Lebanon and Hamas’s top political leader in an attack in Iran’s capital last week. Both were linked to the ongoing war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’s October 7th attack in Israel.
In Gaza, an Israeli strike earlier on Sunday hit a tent camp housing displaced people in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing four people, including one woman, and injuring others, health officials said. They did not say whether those killed were civilians or fighters.
The hospital in Deir al-Balah is the main medical facility operating in central Gaza, and thousands of people have taken shelter there after fleeing their homes in the war-ravaged territory.
A separate strike on a home near Deir al-Balah killed a girl and her parents, according to the hospital.
Another strike flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and their grandmother, according to the ministry, and another three people were killed in a strike on a vehicle in Gaza City.
An Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City on Saturday killed at least 16 people and wounded another 21, according to Gaza’s ministry for health, which announced the toll on Sunday.
Israel’s military, which regularly accuses Palestinian militants of sheltering in civilian areas, said it struck a Hamas command centre.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage in their attack into southern Israel last October.
Israel’s massive offensive launched in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to the territory’s ministry for health, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Heavy air strikes and ground operations have caused widespread destruction and displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Hizbullah has regularly traded fire with Israel along the Lebanon border since the start of the war, in what the militant group says is aimed at relieving pressure on its fellow Iran-backed ally, Hamas. The continuous strikes and counterstrikes have grown in severity in recent months, raising fears of an even more destructive regional war.
More than 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian ministry. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. – AP