At least 24 Palestinians killed in Israeli raids on Gaza: Sources

Gaza (The Uttam Hindu): At least 24 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids across the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said. Israeli warplanes bombed a house in Beit Hanoun town in northern Gaza on Wednesday, according to Palestinian security sources.Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for Civil Defence in Gaza, told Xinhua that four people were killed in the strike, including two women, and several others are still missing under the rubble. In a separate incident in northern Gaza, two more were killed and another seriously injured when an Israeli drone targeted a gathering of Palestinians in the Jabalia area, according to Basal. In addition, a brief statement issued by Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza said that a paramedic was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a building in the town of Beit Lahia at dawn, Xinhua news agency reported. The statement added that the Israeli army detonated a "robot" near the hospital, causing injuries among medical staff and patients, without disclosing their exact number and condition. Meanwhile, Kamal Adwan Hospital said in a statement in the morning that at least 10 people were killed and several others injured in an Israeli shelling on a residential house in Beit Lahia. The hospital's intensive care unit also caught fire as a result of gunfire from Israeli vehicles, the statement said.

In central Gaza, medical and civil defence workers recovered the bodies of four people who were killed in Israeli airstrikes at dawn, one on a tent sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah city and the other around "Ard al-Mufti" park north of al-Nuseirat refugee camp, according to Basal. In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, three Palestinians, including two women, were killed as a result of an Israeli shelling on a house east of the city, reported the Nasser medical compound after receiving the victims' bodies. The Israeli army has not commented on these incidents yet. Israel has been launching a large-scale offensive against Hamas in Gaza to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on October 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage. The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip has risen to 45,097, the Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Wednesday.