Gaza health officials say latest Israeli airstrikes kill at least 14 including children

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes in central Gaza killed at least 14 people including children Sunday, Palestinian health officials said, while the bombing of a hospital in northern Gaza wounded a half-dozen patients.

Israel’s military continues its latest offensive against Hamas militants in northern Gaza, whose remaining Palestinians have been almost completely cut off from the rest of the territory amid a growing humanitarian crisis.

One airstrike flattened a residential building in the urban Bureij refugee camp Sunday afternoon, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, where the casualties were taken.

At least nine people were killed including six children and a woman. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies at the hospital’s morgue.

Earlier on Sunday, another Israeli strike hit a tent in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least five people including two parents and their two children, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said.

In northern Gaza, the Health Ministry said a bombing targeted the Indonesian Hospital wounding six patients, one of them seriously. It is the largest hospital north of Gaza City.

“We demand international protection for hospitals, patients and medical staff,” the ministry said in a statement that also urged safe passage to and from hospitals, more medical supplies and fuel and safe evacuation of the wounded.

The Israeli military Sunday evening said it was unaware of any attack on the Indonesian Hospital “in the last three to four hours.”

Meanwhile, the military said it briefly closed the key Kerem Shalom crossing after fighters launched mortar shells several meters (feet) from the nearby humanitarian corridor toward its troops. It said Gaza’s main cargo crossing was reopened after those who fired were “eliminated,” though it added that the arrival and distribution of humanitarian aid was delayed.

Kerem Shalom is the only crossing between Israel and Gaza that is designed for cargo shipments and has been the main artery for aid since the Rafah crossing with Egypt was shut in May. Last month, nearly two-thirds of aid entering Gaza came through Kerem Shalom.

A second cold, rainy winter is beginning in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in squalid tent camps and reliant on international aid.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 45,600 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

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Wafaa Shurafa And Samy Magdy, The Associated Press