DEIR EZ-OR-BARAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli attacks across northern Gaza killed at least 39 people on Saturday, Palestinian officials and hospital officials said, sending rescue workers scrambling to search for survivors under rubble.
Fadel Naeem, director of Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, told The Associated Press that more than 30 bodies had arrived at the hospital. The Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency group operating in Gaza, said emergency workers were searching for survivors at the site of the bombing in Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City, and had retrieved dozens of bodies from a building hit by Israeli airstrikes in eastern Gaza City.
Israel said on Saturday its warplanes struck two Hamas military sites in the Gaza Strip, but gave no further details.
At least the deaths 25 people died Fifty people were killed and wounded in an attack on a tent camp near the southern city of Rafah. Israel said Saturday it was continuing operations in central and southern Gaza and had pressed ahead with its advance into Rafah, home to more than one million Palestinians who had fled fighting elsewhere. Most people have fled the city, but the UN says the humanitarian situation remains dire, with no safe places to stay in Gaza and families taking refuge in tents and cramped apartments without adequate food, water or medicine.
Another Israeli attack on Saturday in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley killed a member of the military wing of the Islamic Group, a Sunni Islamist group closely allied to Hamas, the group said, the seventh person killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon since the war began.
The Israeli-Hamas war began on October 7 when Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Israel responded with bombing and incursions into the exclave, leaving more than 37,400 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count.
Also on Saturday, the Israeli army said an Israeli man had been shot dead in the north. West Bank Israeli forces shot dead two militants in the town of Qalqilya on Friday, the latest spate of violence in the region. The war between Israel and Hamas It erupted.
At least 549 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire in the region since the war began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which tracks killings. In the same period, Palestinians in the West Bank have killed at least nine Israelis, including five soldiers, according to UN data.
Israeli nationals are banned from entering Qalqilya and other areas of the West Bank under Palestinian Authority control.
In April, following the death of a 14-year-old Israeli settler, A series of colonist attacks The attack was aimed at a Palestinian town in the territory. The army later said a Palestinian had been arrested in connection with the killing.
A 12-year-old Palestinian boy died from injuries sustained in an Israeli gunfire attack in Ramallah last week, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday. The Israeli army said it had opened fire on a group of Palestinians who were throwing stones after it raided the Al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah on Friday and arrested a suspect.
Israel said Saturday it was investigating a separate incident of its soldiers’ actions after a video surfaced online showing a wounded Palestinian being carried on the bonnet of an Israeli armored vehicle in the northern West Bank. The army said the man seen in the video was a wanted suspect who was wounded in a firefight between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces near the city of Jenin. The man was being transported to a nearby Red Crescent ambulance. The army said the actions seen in the video were “not in keeping with the army’s values.”
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, and the Palestinians want those territories as part of their desired independent state.
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Jeffrey reported from Ramallah, and Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
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Click here for AP’s coverage of the Gaza war https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
