Israeli strikes kill 65 Palestinians
Al Jazeera :
Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israeli attacks have killed 65 people and wounded 140 during the latest 24-hour reporting period.
An Israeli air attack on Nabatieh in southern Lebanon has hit a local government building, killing at least five people, including the town’s mayor.
The Israeli siege of northern Gaza continues for a 12th day as rights groups warn that the assault has escalated into a “horrifying level of atrocity”.
Israeli air raids pound Beirut’s southern suburbs, hours after the United States said it opposed the scope of attacks on Lebanon’s capital and the Lebanese prime minister said he had received US assurances Israel would stop. In Gaza, at least 42,409 people have been killed and 99,153 wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. At least 1,139 people were killed in Hamas’s attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Earlier yesterday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed three houses in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, and the local civil emergency service said they recovered two bodies from the site, while the search continued for 12 other people who were believed to have been in the houses at the time of the strike.
Five others were killed when a house was struck in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. Jabalia has been the focus of an Israeli offensive for more than 10 days, with troops returning to areas of the north that came under heavy bombardment in the early months of the year-long offensive.
Around 400,000 Palestinians have been trapped in north, according to United Nations estimates. The health ministry in Gaza said yesterday that at least 42,344 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive that began in October last year.
The Israeli operation has raised concerns among Palestinians and UN agencies that Israel wants to clear residents from the north of the crowded enclave, a charge it has denied.
The United Nations human rights office said yesterday the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip.”
The military has now encircled the Jabalia camp and sent tanks into nearby Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun towns, with the declared aim of stamping out Hamas fighters who are trying to regroup there.
It has told residents to leave their homes and head to safety in southern Gaza. Palestinian and UN officials say there was no place safe in Gaza.
Israeli officials said evacuation orders were aimed at separating Hamas fighters from civilians and denied that there was any systematic plan to clear civilians out of Jabalia or other northern areas. Hamas’ armed wing said fighters were engaged in fierce battles with Israeli forces in and around Jabalia.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has told the Security Council that the United States is watching to ensure that Israel’s actions on the ground show that it does not have a “policy of starvation” in the northern Gaza Strip, Reuters reports.
She told the 15-member council that such a policy would be “horrific and unacceptable and would have implications under international law and US law”.
“The government of Israel has said that this is not their policy, that food and other essential supplies will not be cut off, and we will be watching to see that Israel’s actions on the ground match this statement,” Thomas-Greenfield said.