RAFAH, Gaza Strip – Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 18 people, including 14 children, health officials said on Sunday, as the United States was on track to approve billions of dollars in additional military aid to its ally. next.
Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It also promised to expand its ground offensive into the city on the border with Egypt, despite international calls for restraint, including from the US.
The House of Representatives on Saturday approved a $26 billion aid package that includes about $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.
The first attack killed a man, his wife and their 3-year-old son, according to the nearby Kuwait hospital that received the bodies. The woman was pregnant and doctors were able to save the baby, the hospital said.
The second attack killed 13 children and two women, all from the same family, according to hospital records. An airstrike in Rafah the night before killed nine people, including six children.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, devastated Gaza’s two largest cities and left a swath of destruction across the territory. Around 80% of the population has fled their homes to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave, which experts say is on the brink of famine.
The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest that pits Israel and the US against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran exchanged fire directly earlier this month, raising fears of an all-out war between the longtime enemies.
Tensions have also risen in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli troops killed two Palestinians who the military said attacked a checkpoint with a knife and a gun near the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Sunday morning. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two dead were aged 18 and 19 and were from the same family. No Israeli forces were injured, the army said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said it had recovered a total of 14 bodies from an Israeli operation in the Nur Shams urban refugee camp in the West Bank that began on Thursday. The dead include three militants from the Islamic Jihad group and a 15-year-old boy. The military says it killed 10 militants in the camp and arrested eight suspects. Nine Israeli soldiers and officers were injured.
At least 469 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most were killed during Israeli military detention operations, which often trigger gunfire, or in violent protests.
The war in Gaza was triggered by an unprecedented attack on October 7 in southern Israel, in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped around 250 hostages. Israel says militants still hold about 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 other people.
Thousands of Israelis took to the streets to call for new elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an agreement with Hamas to release the hostages. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are returned.
The war has killed at least 34,049 Palestinians and injured another 76,901, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count, but says at least two-thirds are children and women. He also claims that the real number of victims is likely higher, as many bodies are trapped under rubble left by airstrikes or in areas inaccessible to medics.
Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants fight in dense residential neighborhoods, but the military rarely comments on individual attacks, which often kill women and children. The military claims to have killed more than 13,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence.
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Magdy reported from Cairo.
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