Terrorist Israel bombards northern and southern Gaza, dozens more Palestinians martyred
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) - The terrorist Israeli forces bombarded targets across Gaza on Saturday including a YMCA building, with dozens of Palestinians reported martyred or wounded, despite a renewed US call to scale down the campaign and focus on Hamas leaders.
In Khan Younis in the south, Palestinian health officials said the Nasser Hospital had received 20 Palestinians martyred in air strikes overnight, in addition to dozens of wounded, including women and children.
Palestinian health officials also said Israeli strikes on Gaza City in the north had hit the YMCA headquarters, which is sheltering hundreds of displaced people and reported several dead and wounded.
The official WAFA news agency said at least three dozen people had been killed in strikes on three houses in the Jabalia refugee camp, which health officials were unable to confirm. Gaza's health ministry has said Israel's ground offensive and the targeting of medical facilities have made it hard to gather information about casualties in northern Gaza.
Rescue workers believed some casualties remained buried under the rubble in some of those areas. Gaza residents also reported intense overnight fighting and bombardment in Sheijaia, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah and Beit Hanoun in the north, and in the centre, east and north of Khan Younis.
"The Gaza Strip turned into a ball of fire overnight, we could hear explosions and gunshots echoing from all directions," Ahmed, 45, an electrician and father of six, told Reuters from a shelter in central Gaza.
COMBAT INTENSIFIES
Combat has intensified in the past two weeks since the collapse of a week-long truce that had allowed dozens of hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli and Qatari officials were set to meet in Norway on Saturday in an effort to revive talks about the release of hostages in Gaza in return for a ceasefire and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In signs of the wider ramifications of the conflict, Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthis said they had attacked the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat with a swarm of drones, one of several drone incidents reported in the region on Saturday.
Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes over the past two months, many several times. After Sullivan left, Israel said it would open the Kerem Shalom crossing, the main road link into Gaza, for aid shipments for the first time in the war, allowing in 200 trucks per day.
The UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it had taken 1.4 million people into its facilities, now so overcrowded that there were 486 people for every toilet in its shelters in Rafah. Around 1,000 refugees have been wounded in those shelters since Oct. 7 and at least 288 killed, along with 135 UNRWA workers, the agency said.
Tensions have also soared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces detained 16 Palestinians overnight, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Association, taking the number of arrests there since Oct. 7 to 4,520.
