By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dawoud Abu Alkas
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) – Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with new bombardments that killed at least 20 people on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said, a day after one of the deadliest single strikes of the year-old war killed scores in the north of the enclave.
Eight of Wednesday’s victims were killed in a strike on the Salateen area of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The area is near where medics said at least 93 people were killed or missing on Tuesday in an Israeli strike Washington called “horrifying”.
The Israeli military assault that has laid waste to the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of people shows no signs of slowing as Israel wages a new war in Lebanon and its backer the United States tries after a year of failed attempts to broker ceasefires for both.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled militant group Hamas’ command structure, is currently the focus of the military’s assault. It sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and the neighbouring towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia earlier this month to flush out Hamas militants who it said had regrouped in the area.
The new operation has killed hundreds of Palestinians, medical workers say, and has helped choke aid and food supplies to their lowest level since the beginning of the war.
Officials in Beit Lahiya issued a statement urging world powers and aid agencies to halt Israel’s attacks and bring in basic medical supplies, fuel and food, saying the latest military actions had left the area “without food, without water, without hospitals, without doctors.”
Dr. Eid Sabbah of Beit Lahiya’s Kamal Adwan hospital told Reuters that bodies and injured people remained trapped under rubble.
He said the destruction of hospitals and lack of medical supplies meant doctors and nurses mostly had no chance of saving people who came in with injuries from airstrikes and gunfire.
“Whoever is injured, just lies there on the ground and whoever is killed can’t be transported, except by mule-drawn cart,” he said.
Israel’s decision this week to ban the U.N. relief agency UNRWA from operating on its territory could have a disastrous impact on humanitarian efforts in Gaza, U.N. officials said.
The Gaza war began after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that for years ruled the territory, attacked Israeli towns and villages on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.
The Israeli assault has decimated the besieged strip, wiped out its infrastructure and killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian authorities say.
In a separate assault on Lebanon that targets the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, Israeli forces have bombarded parts of Beirut and areas of the south of the country, killing more than 2,700 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
NO END IN SIGHT
Israel’s military and intelligence operations have decapitated the leadership of both Hamas and Hezbollah, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of Iran’s most important allies in the Middle East.
Yet Israel’s wars show no signs of slowing.
Israel presses on with assaults on Gaza despite the killing this month of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks whose death was a key aim of the war. Several Israeli soldiers have been killed this month in northern Gaza, the military said on Tuesday.
U.S. mediators are working on a proposal to halt hostilities between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, starting with a 60-day ceasefire, two sources told Reuters, but Israel pressed its offensive, ordering residents to evacuate Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected several attempts by the United States, its main ally, at brokering ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon.
As families fled the Beit Lahiya area last week, parents wheeled children in prams and wooden carts and dragged suitcases through the mud. Israel earlier in October told residents of northern Gaza to leave their homes or face missile strikes.
Dalia al-Kharawat, a mother-of-five from Jabalia, begged locals in Gaza City to let her stay and now sleeps in the open-air car park of a destroyed building with her children.
“When we need to sleep, we go here in the rubble, the sand, the broken glass. There is no place at the school shelters,” she said.
Israel has bombed schools where homeless families are staying on a number of occasions, according to Palestinian hospital workers in Gaza.
(Writing by John Davison; Editing by Ros Russell)
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