Israel bombards northern and southern Gaza, many reported dead

[December 16, 2023]  By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ibraheem, Abu and Mustafa

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Israeli forces bombarded targets across northern and southern Gaza on Saturday including a YMCA building, with dozens of Palestinians reported killed or wounded, despite the latest U.S. call to scale down the campaign and focus on Hamas's leaders.

In Khan Younis in the south, Palestinian health officials said the Nasser Hospital had received 20 Palestinians killed in air strikes overnight, in addition to dozens of wounded, including women and children.

Palestinian health officials also said Israeli strikes on Gaza City in the north had hit the YMCA headquarters, which is sheltering hundreds of displaced people and reported several dead and wounded.

The official WAFA news agency said at least three dozen people had been killed in strikes on three houses in the Jabalia refugee camp, which health officials were unable to confirm. Gaza's health ministry has said Israel's ground offensive and the targeting of medical facilities have made it hard to gather information about casualties in northern Gaza.

Rescue workers believed some casualties remained buried under the rubble in some of those areas.

Gaza residents also reported intense overnight fighting and bombardment in Sheijaia, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah and Beit Hanoun in the north, and in the centre, east and north of Khan Younis.

"The Gaza Strip turned into a ball of fire overnight, we could hear explosions and gunshots echoing from all directions," Ahmed, 45, an electrician and father of six, told Reuters from a shelter in central Gaza.

U.S. URGES ISRAEL TO NARROW ITS CAMPAIGN

President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, brought a message to Israel on Thursday and Friday to scale down the campaign and transition to more narrowly targeted operations against Hamas leaders, U.S. officials said.

During the visit, Israeli officials publicly emphasized that they would continue the war until they eradicate Hamas. Washington appeared to acknowledge disagreement, as Sullivan said the timing was under "intensive discussion" between the allies.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had bombed a building in Jabalia from the air after its forces came under fire and Hamas militants were seen on the roof. It was unclear if the building was one of those that WAFA said had been hit.

The military also said it had killed militants holed up in two school buildings in Gaza City, and raided apartments in Khan Younis stocked with weapons, uncovering what it described as underground infrastructure used by Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza and that Israel has vowed to destroy.

"Every day the situation gets worse. Food gets less, water gets worse, only death, fear and destruction get greater," said Samira, 40, a mother of four, who is displaced in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt.

A Palestinian holds a child as they look on at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, December 16, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

"I can't handle the children anymore, they're terrified and so am I. Every night we think it might be our last night, the bombing doesn’t stop," she told Reuters by phone. "When will it be enough and this war stop?"

With intense fighting across the Gaza Strip and aid organizations warning of a humanitarian catastrophe, the United States has said Israel risks losing international support with "indiscriminate" air strikes.

In a surprise cross-border attack on Oct. 7, Hamas militants rampaged through Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and capturing 240 hostages. Israel's counterattack has killed close to 19,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities, with thousands more feared buried under rubble.

ISRAEL ACCIDENTALLY KILLS HOSTAGES

Israel's military said on Friday it had killed three hostages held by Hamas in Gaza after wrongly identifying them as a threat, and that it had recovered the bodies of three other hostages killed by Hamas.

Israel says it believes around 20 of more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza are dead.

Combat has intensified in the past two weeks since a week-long truce that had allowed dozens of hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners collapsed.

Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes over the past two months, many several times.

After Sullivan left, Israel said it would open the Kerem Shalom crossing, the main road link into Gaza, for aid shipments for the first time in the war, allowing in 200 trucks per day.

Aid agencies had long urged Israel to speed up deliveries by letting aid enter at Kerem Shalom.

The U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it had taken 1.4 million people into its facilities, now so overcrowded that there were 486 people for every toilet in its shelters in Rafah.

Around 1,000 refugees have been wounded in those shelters since Oct. 7 and at least 288 killed, along with 135 UNRWA workers, the agency said.

Tensions have also been soaring in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces detained 16 Palestinians overnight, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Association, taking the number of arrests there since Oct. 7 to 4,520.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Shani and Fadi Shana in Gaza, Henriette Chacar, Ari Rabinovitch and Frank Jack Daniel in Jerusalem, Andrea Shalal, Jeff Mason and Eric Beech in Washington; Writing by Michael Perry and Kevin Liffey; Editing by William Mallard, Tom Hogue and Giles Elgood)

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