Israeli airstrikes in Gaza kill 70 people, including 22 children

Deir al-Balah: Israeli airstrikes pounded northern and southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children, according to local hospitals and health officials, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “no way” he would halt Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory before Hamas is defeated.

At least 50 people, including 22 children, were killed in strikes around Jabaliya in northern Gaza alone, according to hospitals and Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The strikes came after Hamas on Monday released an Israeli-American hostage, a gesture that some thought could lay the groundwork for a ceasefire.

Israel’s military refused to comment on the strikes. It warned Jabaliya residents to evacuate late on Tuesday, citing militant infrastructure in the area, including rocket launchers.

In Jabaliya, rescue workers smashed through collapsed concrete slabs using hand tools, lit by the light of cellphones, to remove children’s bodies.

In comments released by Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said Israeli forces were days away from a promised escalation of force and would enter Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission ... It means destroying Hamas.”

An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.

The war began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in a 2023 intrusion into southern Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 52,928 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. Almost 3,000

have been killed since Israel broke a ceasefire on March 18, the ministry said. Israel’s offensive has obliterated vast swathes of Gaza’s urban landscape and displaced 90 per cent of the population, often multiple times.

Israeli media reported that one target in a strike on a hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday was Mohammed Sinwar, younger brother of the late Hamas leader Yahya

Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces last October. The military would not comment beyond saying it had targeted a Hamas “command and

control center” which it said was located beneath the European Hospital.

Mohammed Sinwar is believed to be Hamas’ top military leader in Gaza. Israel has tried to assassinate him multiple times over the past decades.

A senior health official in Gaza said Wednesday that ambulances were no longer able to reach the hospital due to damage from the strike, which had also forced the facility to suspend surgical operations.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director general of Field Hospitals at Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the strike had severely damaged the hospital’s water and sewage systems, as well as its courtyard. He added that the Israeli military hit a bulldozer brought in by hospital authorities to repair the area to allow ambulances reach the building.

“Until these damages are fixed, we will have to shut down most departments of the hospital,” he said, adding that he had no information about Israel’s claimed target of the strike.

International food security experts warned earlier this week that Gaza will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign.

Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation while 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.