At least 22 people killed by Israeli strikes on northern Gaza

ISRAELI STRIKES ON northern Gaza have killed at least 22 people, Palestinian medical officials said.

The Gaza health ministry’s emergency service said 11 women and two children were among those killed in the strikes late on Saturday in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

It said another 15 people were wounded and that the death toll could rise.

The Israeli military claimed it carried out a precise strike on militants in a structure in Beit Lahiya and took steps to avoid harming civilians. It disputed what it said were “numbers published by the media”.

Israel has been waging an air and ground offensive in northern Gaza for the last three weeks after saying Hamas militants had regrouped there.

Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the yearlong war.

Israel is carrying out daily strikes across Gaza, even as it wages war with the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.

The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday said that ongoing Israeli evacuation orders and restrictions on the entry of essential supplies to the north had left the civilian population in “horrific circumstances”.

“Many civilians are currently unable to move, trapped by fighting, destruction or physical constraint and now lack access to even basic medical care,” it said.

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On Saturday, Israeli warplanes attacked Iran in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.

The Israeli military said its “precise” strikes hit Iran’s missile manufacturing facilities, missile installations and other systems in several regions. It warned Iran it would “pay a heavy price” if it responded.

Iran said it has “the right and the duty to defend itself” following the strikes, which killed two soldiers. 

The cascading conflicts have raised fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which also include the Houthi rebels in Yemen and armed groups in Syria and Iraq.

Israel claims its strikes on Gaza only target militants and it blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants fight in densely populated areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

The current conflict in Gaza has been ongoing since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October last year. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory bombardment in Gaza has killed 42,924 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Palestinian health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

The offensive has devastated much of the impoverished coastal territory and displaced around 90% of its population, often multiple times.

Hundreds of thousands of people have crowded into squalid tent camps along the coast, and aid groups say hunger is rampant.

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