GAZA: Dozens of people were killed or unaccounted for after Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, a hospital director and the civil defence agency said Thursday.
One strike near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of the territory left “dozens of people” dead or missing, the facility’s director Hossam Abu Safiya told AFP.
The process of retrieving the bodies and wounded continues, he said, adding: “Bodies arrive at the hospital in pieces.”
Another strike was reported in a neighbourhood of Gaza City. “We can confirm that 22 martyrs were transferred (to hospital) after a strike targeted a house” in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
“There is a headless body. We don’t yet know who this is,” Moataz al-Arouqi, who lives in the area, told AFP. Since Hamas conducted its October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, Israel has been fighting a war in Gaza, which the militant group rules. It vows to crush Hamas and to bring home the hostages seized by the group during the attack.
Israel is also fighting Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both groups are backed by Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
On Thursday, US envoy Amos Hochstein will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek a truce in the war in Lebanon.
Hochstein’s meetings in Lebanon this week appeared to indicate some progress in efforts to end that war.
On the Gaza front, the United States vetoed on Wednesday a UN Security Council push for a ceasefire that Washington said would have emboldened Hamas.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The Hamas government’s health ministry in Gaza said the death toll from the resulting war has reached 44,056 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.
Following the October 7 attack, Hezbollah began launching cross-border strikes on Israel in support of its ally Hamas. In September, Israel expanded the focus of its war from Gaza to Lebanon, vowing to fight Hezbollah until tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the cross-border fire are able to return home.
On Thursday, rocket fire from Lebanon hit a playground in northern Israel, killing one man, Israeli first responders said.