Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in nighttime attacks in Gaza.
At least 24 Palestinians were killed Tuesday morning in air raids on Gaza City, north of the enclave. Among the victims were ten relatives of a senior Hamas official, Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza health officials said.
Two of the air raids hit schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people. Another attack in the Shati camp, one of eight historic refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, killed 10 people.
The house hit in this attack belonged to the extended family of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. One of his sisters was killed along with other relatives.
Haniyeh, based in Qatar, heads Hamas’s diplomacy and is the public face of the group that rules Gaza. He has lost many relatives in Israeli airstrikes since the war began, including three sons.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces targeted fighters involved in planning attacks against Israel in Gaza City overnight. He said the targets included some of those who participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks and others involved in the detention of Israeli captives taken to Gaza.
The Israeli Air Force struck two structures used by Hamas in Shati and Daraj Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip. They “operated inside school compounds used by Hamas as a shield for its terrorist activities,” the statement said.
Hamas denies using civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals for military purposes. He issued a statement calling the attacks on the two schools and Shati’s house “massacres.”
“We hold the administration of US President Joe Boden accountable for continuing the war of genocide against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip by continuing to provide the Zionist government and its criminal army with political and military cover,” it said. we read in the press release.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks also moved deeper into western areas of the southern city of Rafah, blowing up houses, according to local witnesses.
The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a joint statement that their fighters fired mortars overnight against Israeli forces in the Yibna neighborhood, east of Rafah.
In the nearby town of Khan Younis, medics said, Israeli tank shelling injured several people in a tent camp west of the town.
At least 10 people, including guards securing aid trucks, were killed in an attack on people seeking humanitarian supplies in Khan Younis.
In central Gaza, an airstrike killed five people, including four children, and wounded at least ten others on Monday evening, hospital officials said.
The dead and injured were taken from the Maghazi refugee camp to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir el-Balah.
