Israeli attacks in the northern Gaza Strip have killed at least 22 people, Palestinian medical officials said on Sunday.
The Gaza Health Ministry's emergency service said that 11 women and two minors were among the dead in the Saturday night attacks on homes and buildings in the town of Beit Lahiya. It said that 15 other people were injured and the death toll could rise, as reported by Ap.
There has been no comment from the Israeli army so far.
Israel has been waging a massive ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip in the past three weeks, stating that the Palestinian group Hamas was regrouping there.
Hundreds of people have died, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled Gaza City in the most recent wave of war refugees.
At the same time, Israel has been waging a war against the Hezbollah group in Lebanon. On Saturday, Israeli planes attacked Iran which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile attack against Israel.
The escalating conflicts have raised fears of a broad conflagration in which Israel and the United States would fight against Iran and its allied militias, including the Houthis from Yemen and armed groups in Syria and Iraq.
Israel states that its attacks in Gaza are only against militants, and blames Hamas for civilian casualties, pointing out that the group operates from populated areas. The army rarely comments on individual attacks, which often result in the deaths of women and children.
The war began when militants led by Hamas invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping around 250. About 100 hostages are still held in Gaza, although it is believed that a third of them have perished.
Israeli retaliation has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but asserts that over half were women and children.
The offensive has devastated much of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population, sometimes multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people are crowded into tent camps on the coast, and humanitarian groups report widespread hunger.
Israel says it killed 70 Hezbollah members
The Israeli Army claimed on Sunday to have eliminated about 70 militants and targeted over 120 Hezbollah objectives in the last day, both in southern Lebanon and in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Shiite militia's stronghold now devastated by Israeli attacks, as reported by Efe.
"During the night, the Israeli Armed Forces carried out precise attacks based on intelligence information against weapons manufacturing and maintenance facilities and a weapons depot belonging to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in the Dahye area, a key stronghold," explained a military statement today.
The text also explains that another target was "infrastructure" used by Hezbollah's Air Unit, without specifying where, as well as militants who fired at Israeli troops, who began a ground invasion of Lebanon on October 1.
Simultaneously, regarding the war in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army said on Sunday to have eliminated over 40 militants in the northern Yabalia in just the last day, an area under military siege for over 21 days where hundreds of Gazans have died, including women and children.
Yesterday, the Gaza Civil Defense warned of the inability of their teams to respond to the multiple distress calls they were receiving from northern Gaza due to Israeli attacks and the siege of hospitals like Kamal Adwan, where 44 healthcare workers were detained.
"We are unable to respond to the multiple calls and requests we receive from homes that have been bombed and set on fire by Israeli forces in the towns of Yabalia and Al Nazla, in northern Gaza," warned the group's spokesperson, Mahmud Basal, on their Telegram channel.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, denounced yesterday in X that "the situation in northern Gaza is catastrophic," and stated that the "intense military operations" around and inside hospitals, as well as the lack of resources, are depriving Gazans of vital medical care.