DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 75 people overnight and into Sunday, hospitals and medics in the battered enclave said, as Israel intensifies its war in the territory that, after more than 19 months, shows no signs of abating.
More than 20 people were killed in airstrikes that hit houses and tents sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza, according to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis.
In northern Gaza, a strike on a home in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp killed nine people from a single family, according to the Gaza health ministry’s emergency services. Another strike on a family’s residence, also in Jabaliya, killed 10, including seven children and a woman, according to the civil defense, which operates under the Hamas-run government.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the overnight strikes.
The bloodshed comes as Israel ramps up its war in Gaza with a new offensive named “Gideon’s Chariots,” in which Israel says it plans to seize territory, displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Gaza’s south and take greater control over the distribution of aid.
Israel’s new offensive
Israel says the new plan is meant to ramp up pressure on the militant Hamas group to agree to a temporary ceasefire on Israel’s terms — one that would free Israeli hostages held in Gaza but wouldn’t necessarily end the war. Hamas says it wants a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a pathway to ending the war as part of any new ceasefire deal.
Israel had said it would wait until the end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to the region before launching its new offensive, saying it was giving a chance for efforts to bring about a new ceasefire deal. And while teams are still negotiating a potential truce in the Qatari capital Doha, there appears to have been no breakthrough. Trump did not visit Israel on his trip, which wrapped up on Friday.
Israel shattered a previous 8-week ceasefire in mid-March, launching fierce airstrike that killed hundreds. Days before the end of that ceasefire, Israel also halted all imports into Gaza, including food, medicine and fuel, deepening a humanitarian crisis and sparking warnings of an increasing risk of famine in the territory — a blockade that continues.
Israel says that move is also meant to pressure Hamas.
The war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251 others. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Strikes pound Gaza
In northern Gaza, parts of which have been flattened by Israel’s onslaught, at least 43 people were killed in multiple strikes, according to first responders from the health ministry and the civil defense. Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital said among the dead, 15 were children and 12 were women.
In Jabaliya, a built-up refugee camp in northern Gaza, 10 people, including seven children and a woman were killed, according to the civil defense, which operates under the Hamas-run government. Among the dead were two parents and their three children and a father and his four children, it said.
In central Gaza, at least 12 people were killed in three separate strikes, hospitals said. One strike in the Zweida town killed seven people, including two children and four women, according to according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah. The second hit an apartment in Deir al-Balah, killing two parents and their child, the hospital said. In Nuseirat camp, a strike hit a house and killed two people, said the camp’s Awda hospital,
Nasser Hospital said it struggled to count the dead because of the condition the bodies were brought in.
Houthi rebels launch missile at Israel
As the war in Gaza grinds on, the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has escalated.
The Israeli military said it intercepted a Houthi missile launched at the country early Sunday, which set off air raid sirens in multiple parts of the country.
The rebels said they fired two ballistic missiles – including a hypersonic one – towards Israel’s main airport near Tel Aviv, whose grounds earlier this month were struck by a Houthi missile.
“The operation successfully achieved its goal, thanks to Allah, and caused millions of occupying Zionists to rush to shelters,” said Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree.
Israel was left out of a U.S. deal to halt attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen in exchange for a stop to their strikes on U.S. shipping vessels in the Red Sea. On Friday, Israel struck Yemen for the eighth time since the war in Gaza began in response to the Houthi attacks.
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Magdy reported from Cairo.
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