Israel bombards northern and southern Gaza, many reported dead

CAIRO/GAZA - Israeli forces bombarded targets across northern and southern Gaza on Dec 16, including a YMCA building, with dozens of Palestinians reported killed or wounded despite the latest call by the United States 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.

Palestine’s 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 Shejaiya, 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,” Mr Ahmed, 45, an electrician and father of six, told Reuters from a shelter in central Gaza.

US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Mr Jake Sullivan, brought a message to Israel on Dec 14 and Dec 15 to scale down the campaign and transition to more narrowly targeted operations against Hamas leaders, US officials said.

During Mr Sullivan’s visit, Israeli officials publicly emphasised they would continue the war until they eradicated Hamas.

Washington appeared to acknowledge disagreement

, as Mr Sullivan said the timing was under “intensive discussion” between the allies.

An Israeli military official said

three hostages killed mistakenly in Gaza

by Israeli forces had been holding up a white flag, according to an initial inquiry.

The incident happened in an area of intense combat where Hamas militants operate in civilian attire and use deception tactics, the official said, but the hostages were fired upon against Israel’s rules of engagement.

Israel, which said it recovered the bodies of three other hostages killed by Hamas, believes around 20 of more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza are dead.

The Israeli military said on Dec 16 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 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 which 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 Ms Samira, 40, a mother of four who is displaced in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt.

“I can’t handle the children any more, 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 ground fighting across the length of the Gaza Strip and aid organisations warning of a humanitarian catastrophe, the US has said

Israel risks losing international support

with “indiscriminate” air strikes.

In a surprise cross-border attack on Israel 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.

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.

Israeli and Qatari officials were set to meet in Norway on Dec 16 in an effort to revive talks about the release of hostages in Gaza in return for a ceasefire and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In signs of the wider ramifications of the conflict, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis said they had attacked the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat with a swarm of drones, one of several drone incidents reported in the region on Dec 16.

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

After Mr 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 200 trucks in a day.

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

The United Nations 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 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. REUTERS