The bloodshed followed the launch of a new Israeli military operation aimed at putting more pressure on Hamas to release hostages.
Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 103 people overnight into Sunday, hospitals and medics said, as Israel intensified its war in the territory after more than 19 months of fighting. The strikes also forced the main hospital in northern Gaza to close.
More than 48 people were killed in airstrikes in and around the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital. Among the dead were 18 children and 13 women, a hospital spokesperson told the Associated Press.
In northern Gaza, a strike on a home in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp killed nine people from a single family, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry’s emergency services. Another strike on a family’s residence, also in Jabaliya, killed 10, including seven children and a woman, according to the civil defense, which operates under the Hamas-run government.
Gaza health officials said that fighting around the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and an Israeli military « siege » prompted it to shut down.
The hospital was the main medical facility in the territory’s war-wrecked north, after northern Gaza’s previous main hospital, Kamal Adwan, was forced to stop serving Palestinians last year because of Israeli strikes, as was a second facility, Beit Hanoun Hospital.
The Israeli military did not have an immediate comment on the overnight strikes, but said troops were « operating against terror infrastructure sites in northern Gaza », including in the area adjacent to the Indonesian Hospital, without providing more details.
