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Palestinian Territories:
The Israeli military on Friday reported three rockets fired into its territory from the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian aid workers said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 16 people, including children.
The rockets were the latest in a series of launches by militants in the ravaged Palestinian territory, with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warning this week that if they continue, there will be more severe retaliatory attacks.
After more than 14 months of war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas operatives in Gaza, such launches have become rare. They have intensified since late December as Israel has continued a major ground and air campaign in the north of the area for three months.
One of Friday’s rockets landed “adjacent to the community of Nir Am” in Israel on the northeastern tip of Gaza, the military said, while the other landed in an uninhabited area.
Earlier in the day, it said another rocket fired from Gaza had set off sirens near Beri, opposite central Gaza.
No injuries were reported.
In Gaza, first responders said they recovered the bodies of 16 Palestinians, many of them children.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense, said that the attacks took place in Gaza City, the central Maghazi refugee camp and the southern city of Rafah.
“Friday was a tough day for Gaza residents, especially because of the continuous Israeli bombardment in Gaza City,” he told AFP.
He said several deaths occurred in attacks and shelling in northern and central Gaza, and two in the south.
Civil Defense said three children were killed in Israeli shelling in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, while two people were killed in an airstrike in the southern Rafah area.
The Israeli military said in a statement that yesterday, “the Israeli air force struck about 40 Hamas terrorist gathering sites across Gaza”.
It said some of the targets were “embedded in areas that previously served as schools”.
Hospital ‘a pile of rubble’
Bassel denied the army’s charge, alleging that the army was “blocking food and drinking water to dozens of medical staff, patients and wounded” at an Indonesian hospital in the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. .
He said his agency has received distress calls from the hospital since Thursday, adding that the facility is now “just a pile of rubble and walls. There is no hospital.”
Late Friday, the military said it had not attacked an Indonesian hospital the previous day and had not damaged any essential equipment.
It added that “there is no need to evacuate the hospital” and the military is coordinating with hospital officials to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the facility.
On Sunday, a UN aid team visited an Indonesian hospital.
In a video released after visiting the hospital, UN aid official Jonathan Vitale said: “There is nothing but rubble and destruction around me.”
The Israeli military has regularly accused Hamas of using hospitals as command centers, which its operatives deny.
A report published Tuesday by the United Nations human rights office said “insufficient information” had been made available to substantiate Israeli allegations of military use of hospitals.
The Israeli military has launched heavy raids in northern Gaza since October 6 in what it says is an attempt to prevent Hamas operatives from regrouping there.
The “siege” of northern Gaza appears to be part of an effort to permanently displace the local population as a prelude to Gaza’s annexation, UN rights experts said on Monday.
Bassel estimated that 10,000 people remained in the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanun, from between 150,000 and 200,000 before the war.
Earlier this week, Katz warned that Israel would step up attacks in Gaza if the rocket fire did not stop and the hostages were not released.
The war in Gaza began on October 7 last year when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,208 people, mostly civilians.
Israel’s retaliation has so far killed at least 45,658 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry, a figure the United Nations considers reliable.
On Friday, the Israeli military also said it shot down a missile and a drone launched from Yemen, where Iran-backed rebels fought in November between Israel and another Iran-backed group, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Attacks targeting Israel have increased since the ban.
Israel has also attacked Yemen, including targeting Sana’a International Airport in late December.
(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
