GAZA STRIP: Deadly fighting and bombardment rocked Gaza on Tuesday as international mediators pushed for a new halt in the Israel-Hamas war and a deal to release hostages.
Heavy Israeli strikes and urban combat across the besieged Gaza Strip killed 128 more people overnight, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said.
The epicentre of fighting has been the southern city of Khan Yunis, where vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings.
Troops fighting in city blocks and tunnels “eliminated terrorists during combat and located large quantities of weapons”, the Israeli military said.
Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group fighting alongside Hamas, said it was battling Israeli troops near Khan Yunis and in other areas including Gaza City.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since the start of the war, Israeli undercover troops raided a hospital in the northern city of Jenin, killing three men the army said were members of a “terrorist cell”.
Some of the Israeli agents were dressed as medical staff and carried a wheelchair and baby carrier as props, according to officials and hospital CCTV footage released by the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.
Hamas said one of the three killed, Muhammad Jalamnah, was a commander in its armed wing.
The Israeli army charged that Jalamnah, allegedly “inspired” by the October 7 attack that triggered the war, had “planned to carry out a terror attack in the immediate future and used the hospital as a hiding place”.
The Palestinian health ministry stressed that hospitals enjoy special protection under international law and urged the United Nations to help end Israel’s “daily string of crimes... against our people and health centres”.
The Gaza war, now in its fourth month, has left much of the coastal territory in ruins and sparked a spiralling humanitarian crisis for its 2.4 million people, many of whom face the threats of hunger and disease.
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