Israeli airstrikes kill at least 72 in Gaza and 3 journalists in south Lebanon
Israeli forces stormed hospital and stationed forces outside, Gaza health officials say
Israeli strikes since Thursday night killed at least 72 people in Gaza and three journalists in Lebanon on Friday as growing worries about supply shortages in Gaza and international pressure for a ceasefire mounted.
The airstrikes and shelling hit houses in eastern neighbourhoods of the southern city of Khan Younis late Thursday and early Friday, Palestinian health officials said. Hospital records showed 14 of those killed were children, almost all of them from a single family.
Photos from the European Hospital morgue showed nine of the small children in body bags on the floor.
In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it killed a number of Palestinian gunmen in air and ground strikes in the southern Gaza Strip and dismantled military infrastructure. It did not provide any evidence.
Some residents returned to the scene on Friday morning, sifting through rubble in an attempt to retrieve some of their clothes and documents, while children looked for their toys.
Meanwhile in northern Gaza, where the area around the town of Jabalia has been the target of a weeks-long offensive, health officials said Israeli forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities struggling to operate there, and stationed forces outside it.
"The terrorizing of civilians, the injured and children began as [the Israeli army] started opening fire on the hospital," Eid Sabbah, the hospital's director of nursing, said in a voice note to Reuters.
When the army retreated, a delegation from the World Health Organization arrived with an ambulance and evacuated some patients. The WHO confirmed it had transferred 49 patients and caregivers to the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
"We saw mayhem and chaos.... The emergency wards [in Kamal Adwan] were overflowing, and we saw numerous patients being brought in and horrific trauma patients, completely overwhelming the staff," said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory.
Israel's military humanitarian unit, Cogat, which oversees aid and commercial shipments to Gaza, said the military facilitated the transfer of 49 patients to other hospitals, the entry of a fuel truck for the Kamal Adwan Hospital and the delivery of 180 blood units and medical supplies.
Medics refusing to leave patients
After the partial evacuation, Israeli tanks returned and opened fire on the hospital, striking its oxygen stores, before raiding the building and ordering staff and patients to leave, the nursing director Sabbah said.
The Israeli military said it was operating in the area of Kamal Adwan Hospital based on intelligence "regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure" there.
Medics at the three hospitals have refused Israeli orders to evacuate their hospitals and leave patients unattended. They said at least 800 Palestinians have been killed in northern Gaza since the army began the new offensive three weeks ago.
The Israeli military said on Friday that three of its soldiers were killed in combat in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas's armed wing said its fighters detonated a bomb against an Israeli army vehicle in Jabalia in the north. It was not clear if this was the same incident.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes on three houses in the nearby Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed 25 people and wounded dozens of others, medics said. Later on Friday, medics said a separate Israeli airstrike killed nine people in Shati camp in Gaza City.
The operation in northern Gaza has fuelled fears among Palestinians that Israeli forces are clearing the area in order to create a buffer zone for the military after the war or to pave the way for the return of settlers who left Gaza in 2005.
Israel has denied such plans and accuses Hamas of hindering the evacuation of civilians to provide cover for its own forces, which Hamas, in turn, denies.
Journalists killed in Lebanon identified
Also on Friday, an Israeli airstrike on guesthouses where journalists were staying in southeast Lebanon killed three media staffers. Outside of now-collapsed buildings rented by various media outlets, cars marked "PRESS" lay covered in dust and rubble after the strike, Associated Press photos showed.
The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike. Representatives of the news networks and Lebanese politicians accused Israel of war crimes and intentionally targeting journalists.
"These were just journalists that were sleeping in bed after long days of covering the conflict," said Imran Khan, a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera English who was among the journalists in the compound. In a social media post, he said he and his team were not hurt.
The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers — camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida — were among the journalists killed early Friday. Al-Manar TV of Lebanon's Hezbollah group said its camera operator, Wissam Qassim, was also killed in the airstrike on the Hasbaya region.
Al-Mayadeen's director, Ghassan bin Jiddo, alleged that the Israeli strike on a compound housing journalists was intentional and directed at those covering elements of its military offensive. He vowed that the Beirut-based station would continue its work.
Lebanon's Information Minister Ziad Makary said the journalists were killed while broadcasting what he called Israel's crimes, and noted they were among a large group of members of the media.
"This is an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, with premeditation and planning, as there were 18 journalists present at the location representing seven media institutions," he wrote in a post on X.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
Ali Shoeib, Al-Manar's well-known correspondent in south Lebanon, was seen in a video filming himself with a cellphone saying that the camera operator who had been working with him for months was killed. Shoeib said the Israeli military knew that the area that was struck housed journalists of different media organizations.
"We were reporting the news and showing the suffering of the victims and now we are the news and the victims of Israel's crimes," Shoeib said in the video aired on Al-Manar TV.
The Hasbaya region has been spared much of the violence along the border and many of the journalists now staying there have moved from the nearby town of Marjayoun that has been subjected to sporadic strikes in recent weeks. Earlier in the week, a strike hit an office belonging to Al-Mayadeen on the outskirts of Beirut's southern suburbs, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.
Lebanon's Health Minister said Friday that 11 journalists have been killed and eight wounded since exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border in early October 2023.
On Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it had preliminarily counted 128 journalists killed in Gaza since the war began. Israel has accused journalists working for Al Jazeera of being members of militant groups, citing documents it purportedly found in Gaza. The network has denied the claims as "a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region."
The CPJ has dismissed them, as well, and said that "Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence."
New push in ceasefire efforts
The escalation came as the United States pushed for a new effort to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that would end the war and see the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held captive in Gaza as well as many Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
U.S. and Israeli negotiators will gather in Doha in the coming days to try to restart talks toward a deal, officials said on Thursday.
Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, including several Canadian citizens, and abducting another 250. Those totals are according to the Israeli government, which also believes around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,847 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The Israeli campaign has since expanded to Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion Oct. 1, after trading fire with the Hezbollah militant group for much of the past year. Israel has killed the leader of the group, considered a terrorist organization by several Western countries including Canada, as well as some potential successors as leader.
With files from The Associated Press and Mohamed El Saife