RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces launched strikes across Gaza overnight and into Tuesday to continue an offensive that is expected to last for weeks or months, despite international calls for a cease-fire which left both Israel and the United States increasingly isolated.
Hamas’ assault into southern Israel on Oct. 7 has brought unprecedented death and destruction to Gaza, resulting in northern Gaza being obliterated, the death of more than 18,000 Palestinians, and over 80% of the 2.3 million inhabitants pushed from their homes.
The health care system and humanitarian aid operations have collapsed in large parts of the besieged enclave, with aid workers warning of hunger and the spread of disease among displaced people in overcrowded shelters and tent camps.
The overnight strikes in southern Gaza, where civilians were instructed to seek shelter, resulted in the deaths of at least 23 people, including seven children and six females, according to hospital records and an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the bodies at a hospital.
Islam Harb’s three children were among those killed overnight when Israeli airstrikes destroyed four residential structures in the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border. The family was sharing their home with nine displaced people, he said.
“My twin girls, Maria and Joud, were martyred, and my young son, Ammar, was also martyred,” he said.
In central Gaza, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah received the bodies of 33 people killed in overnight strikes, including 16 females and four children, according to hospital records. Many were killed in strikes that hit residential structures in the populated Maghazi refugee camp.
Israeli forces also stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, where the UN humanitarian agency said there are 65 patients, including 12 children in intensive care and six newborns in incubators. Some 3,000 displaced persons are sheltering there, all waiting for evacuation due to extreme shortages of food, water, and electricity.
The military has been rounding up men in northern Gaza as they search for Hamas fighters. There have been reports and videos online showing detainees stripped to their underwear, bound and blindfolded, and some have said they were beaten and denied food and water.
At another hospital in northern Gaza, the aid group Doctors Without Borders said a surgeon was injured Monday by a shot fired from outside the facility, which it says has been under “total siege” by Israeli forces for a week.
There has been no immediate comment from the military on either incident in the north.
Israel launched the campaign after Hamas militants breached its defenses and streamed into the south on Oct. 7.
