Israeli military strikes killed at least 22 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave.
Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.
Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue towards Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said.
Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fuelled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.
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The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hardliners in his government have talked openly about going back.
It said forces have killed hundreds of Hamas militants in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun during its new military offensive, which began more than a month ago. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed killing several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire.
Efforts by Arab mediators, Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to end the war in Gaza, with Hamas and Israel trading the blame for the lack of progress.
Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli air strike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli air strikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli strike on a house in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, medics said.
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, Palestinian health officials say, and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble, where more than two million Gazans are seeking shelter in makeshift tents and facing shortages of food and medicines.
Israeli air strikes pounded Beirut’s Hizbullah-controlled southern suburbs for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, as Lebanon waited to hear Washington’s latest ceasefire proposals after a US official expressed hope a truce could be reached.
More than seven weeks since Israel went on the offensive against Iran-backed Hizbullah, midmorning air strikes levelled half a dozen buildings in the Beirut suburb known as Dahiyeh and killed eight people in Dawhit Aramoun, a village south of the capital. The dead included three women and three children, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Israel launched a major air and ground offensive against the heavily armed Hizbullah in late September after nearly a year of cross-border conflict fought in parallel with the Gaza war.
White House envoy Amos Hochstein, the US official who has led several fruitless attempts to broker a ceasefire over the last year, told Axios that he thought “there is a shot” at a truce in Lebanon soon. “I am hopeful we can get it.” – Reuters
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