Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 14 people, half of them children.
The Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, said three children and their mother were killed in an airstrike late Monday in the Tufah neighborhood of Gaza City. It said three other people were missing after the strike.
Another strike late Monday hit a building in downtown Gaza City, killing a child, three women and a man, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
In southern Gaza, a strike on a home early Tuesday killed five people, including a man, his three children as young as 3 years old and a woman, according to a casualty list provided by Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where the bodies were taken.
Palestinian health officials do not say whether those killed in Israeli strikes are civilians or fighters.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses Hamas of putting them in danger by fighting in residential areas. But the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel’s offensive has killed over 40,000 people in Gaza. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people.
Here’s the latest:
TEL AVIV, Israel — Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with top Israeli defense leaders on Monday, and visited the military’s Northern Command headquarters.
Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey, Brown’s spokesperson, said the chairman met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in Tel Aviv, and he participated in operational updates with Israeli Defense Force senior leaders.
“The leaders reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-Israeli strategic partnership while also discussing the most recent engagement across the Israeli-Lebanese border and the need to de-escalate tensions to avoid a broader conflict,” said Dorsey.
He said they also discussed Israel’s need to defend itself as well as the need to get more humanitarian support into Gaza and the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. Dorsey said they talked about Brown’s recent meetings with other partners in the region. He visited Jordan and Egypt.
He said the U.S. “continues to coordinate with Israel and other allies and partners on ways to improve regional security and stability, protect U.S. forces in the Middle East, and deter a broader conflict.”
Gallant’s office said the Israeli defense chief thanked Brown for “his unequivocal commitment to Israel’s security,” including through the deployment of U.S. forces in the Middle East.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian health officials say an Israeli airstrike has killed five Palestinians in the northern West Bank.
The military said late Monday that it struck an “operations room” used by militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the city of Tulkarem. Palestinian health officials said five bodies arrived at a nearby hospital.
Neither Palestinian health officials nor the military immediately identified those killed.
It’s the latest violence to occur in the West Bank, where around 640 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, most from Israeli raids into Palestinian cities and towns.
UNITED NATIONS – Sixteen evacuation orders by Israel’s military this month have squeezed Gazans into even smaller areas of the territory and the latest has shut the U.N. humanitarian operations center. However, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA is still providing health care and other assistance.
As a result of the orders, several hundred thousand already displaced Palestinians have been forced to move again, and the humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk to about 11% of the entire Gaza Strip, Sam Rose, the senior deputy field director for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees told reporters Monday.
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