DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed at least 35 people Sunday, hospital officials said, as the military targeted areas in several parts of the territory a day after the country’s prime minister said the war will continue for “many more months,” resisting international calls for a cease-fire.
The military said Israeli forces were operating in Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, and residents reported strikes in the central part of the tiny enclave, after Israel this week made that region the new focus of its war.
The war has raised fears of a broader regional conflagration. The U.S. military on Sunday said it shot down two anti-ship ballistic missiles fired toward a container ship by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. Hours later, four boats tried to attack the same ship, but U.S. forces opened fire, killing several of the armed crews, the U.S. Central Command said.
Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive has killed more than 21,600 Palestinians and wounded more than 55,000 others, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The war has sparked a humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of Gaza residents facing starvation, according to the United Nations. Israel’s bombardments have levelled vast swaths of the territory, making parts uninhabitable and displacing some 85% of Gaza’s inhabitants.
Israel expanded its offensive to central Gaza this week, targeting a belt of dense urban neighborhoods that house refugees from the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948 and their descendants. The fighting has left Palestinians in Gaza with the feeling that nowhere is safe.
In the area of Zweida in central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens of others, according to witnesses. The bodies were draped in white plastic and laid out in front of a hospital, where prayers were held before burial.
Officials from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah said the 13 were among 35 bodies received on Sunday.
